Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Case Study --Traditional knowledge Digital Library

 

Traditional knowledge Digital Library

Introduction

    1. The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) is an Indian digital knowledge repository of the traditional knowledge, especially about medicinal plants and formulations used in Indian systems of medicine.
    2. Set up in 2001, as a collaboration between the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the MINISTRY OF AYUSH.
    3. objective of the library is to protect the ancient and traditional knowledge of the country from exploitation through biopiracy and unethical patents, by documenting it electronically and classifying it as per international patent classification systems.
    4. Apart from that, the non-patent database serves to foster modern research based on traditional knowledge, as it simplifies access to this vast knowledge of remedies or practices.
    5.  The TKDL contains documentation of publicly available traditional knowledge (TK) that:
  • relates to Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Yoga
  • is in digitized format
  • is available in five languages: English, German, French, Japanese and Spanish.


 The TKDL:

  1. seeks to prevent the granting of patents for products developed utilizing TK where there has been little, if any, inventive step
  2. intends to act as a bridge between information recorded in ancient Sanskrit and patent examiners (with its database containing information in a language and format understandable to patent examiners)
  3. facilitates access to information not easily available to patent examiners, thereby minimizing the possibility that patents could be granted for “inventions” involving only minor or insignificant modifications.

 TKDL

  1. TKDL is an initiative to provide the information on traditional knowledge existing in the country, in languages and format understandable by patent examiners at International Patent Offices (IPOs), so as to prevent the grant of wrong patents.
  2. TKDL is a collaborative project of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Department of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy, is situated in Ghaziabad, U.P.
  3. TKDL acts as a bridge between the traditional knowledge information existing in local languages and the patent examiners at IPOs.

TKDL evolve

  1. TKDL uses the tools of information technology and a novel classification system to make available traditional medical knowledge in digital form.
  2. Vinod Kumar Gupta, who set up TKDL, devised a modern classification based on the structure of International Patent Classification (IPC) for India’s traditional systems: Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha & Yoga.
  3. The India’s traditional knowledge is found in Sanskrit, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Arabic, Persian and Urdu texts. This is inaccessible and incomprehensible to patent examiners overseas. The focus of TKDL was on breaking the language and format barriers by scientifically converting and structuring the available TK in IPC.
  4. The Traditional Knowledge Resource Classification (TKRC) has resulted in a fundamental reform of IPC by enhancing the TK segment from one sub-group to 207 sub-groups, thus enabling effective search and examination process.

TKDL work

The knowledge obtained from ancient Indian texts is stored in 34 million A4 size pages and translated into five foreign languages – in Japanese, English, Spanish, German and French.
It is not a transliteration; rather it is a knowledge-based conversion, where data abstracted once is converted into several languages by using Unicode, Metadata methodology.
TKDL has signed access and non-disclosure agreements with the Indian and seven other global patent offices. This ensures near-foolproof security for our invaluable bioresources against piracy.
All of this required not just high-end technology but also skills of a high technical order. And there were people with knowledge of ancient texts, modern medicine and technical terms of foreign languages.
This was a tremendous exercise of global proportions and the price for this unique propriety system was Rs. 16 crore.

TKDL benefits

  1. TKDL has identified 1,000 cases of biopiracy of India’s TK in the last 3 years. In 105 cases, patent claims were withdrawn or cancelled by the patent offices. This is done at no cost to India and it takes very less time. All that is required is an e-mail to the relevant patent office.
  2. There is necessity to spend huge legal fees and time in fighting biopiracy. For example, the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) spent 7 years and Rs 7.62 crore in legal fees to fight the intellectual property rights battle for basmati rice.
  3. There has been as much as a 44% decline in patent claims filed on Indian systems of medicine.
  4. Now TKDL also includes videos of the most common yoga postures. This is avoids grating wrong patents for Yoga exercise in the west which is an increasing trend.
TKDL in other countries

Biopiracy is prevalent not just in the case of India’s traditional knowledge. A large number of countries, rich in bioresources across the African and Latin American continents, are facing the same problem.
  • The Traditional Knowledge of nearly 110 developing countries is vulnerable to theft and capture.
  • With the help of India’s experience these countries can initiate similar programmes to protect the traditional knowledge.
  • The Government of Peru has recently declared its intention of setting up an institution similar to India’s TKDL.

Protection to all forms of traditional knowledge

 The protection of Traditional Knowledge is important for the conservation and sustainable development of the environment, as much of the world's biodiversity has been conserved and preserved by indigenous people. Their knowledge is central to the protection and conservation of genetic resources and other bio-resources.

  1. When community members innovate within the traditional knowledge framework, they may use the patent system to protect their innovations. However, traditional knowledge as such - knowledge that has ancient roots and is often informal and oral - is not protected by conventional intellectual property systems.
  2. Traditional knowledge refers to: knowledge or practices passed down from generation to generation that form part of the traditions or heritage of Indigenous communities. knowledge or practice for which Indigenous communities act as the guardians or custodian.
  3. Traditional knowledge can be found in a wide variety of contexts, including: agricultural, scientific, technical, ecological and medicinal knowledge as well as biodiversity-related knowledge.
  4. The Traditional Knowledge Act of 2016 in Kenya mainly seeks to protect and enhance intellectual property in and indigenous knowledge of biodiversity and genetic resources, ensure that communities receive compensation or royalties for use of their TK.
  5. Traditional Knowledge must be protected because Need to protect traditional knowledge have increased with changing time, especially in order to stop unauthorized and commercial misuse of such knowledge. It is important to protect the indigenous people from such loss and also help them to preserve such ancient practices.

 

 Government of India (GoI) protecting traditional knowledge of medicine from patenting by pharmaceutical companies:

India has a rich history of traditional medicinal practices that date back to thousands of years. These techniques and components have come into the light during recent times mainly due to the interest shown by multinationals to exploit the knowledge and benefit from the profits. In order to protect the knowledge from being patented, the government has indeed been striving hard.

Reference

 

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