The government of India has granted the EPO access to its Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, which is a 30-million-page searchable database of traditional knowledge translated from Hindi, Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Tamil into English, Japanese, French, German and Spanish. The EPO began using the database on February 2.
"The cooperation between India and the EPO brings advantages to both parties. It helps protect India's traditional knowledge from misappropriation and gives the EPO additional relevant information for granting properly defined patents", said Paul Schwander, director of information acquisition at the EPO.
Five Indian government organisations, led by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the The Department of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) started developing the database in 1999.
So-called bio-piracy through the registering of patents for traditional Indian knowledge is a controversial topic in India. The Indian government has successfully opposed a US patent for the healing properties of turmeric granted in 1995 and last year won a 10-year battle against an EPO patent on the antifungal properties of oil from the Neem tree. In 2007 rumours that people in the US were trying to obtain patents for yoga were widely reported.
A press release issued by the Indian government and signed by Samir Brahmachari, director general of CSIR, described the grant of the turmeric and neem patents as "the cause of great national distress, since, every Indian felt that the knowledge that belonged to India were wrongfully taken away from India".
The statement estimates that around 2,000 patents based on Indian traditional knowledge are incorrectly granted every year.
USPTO examiners may soon be following the EPO's lead. A spokesperson for the Office confirmed to Managing IP that it is in the process of negotiating with CSIR over access to the database.
But Shamnad Basheer, professor in IP law at the National University of Juridical Sciences in Kolkata and founder of the Spicy IP blog, believes that the Indian government should do more than give the database to patent offices. "It is of no value if you just hide it away and keep it for patent offices".
Basheer would like to see the database made available to private parties as long as the government negotiates appropriate licensing terms, including remuneration for use of the knowledge. Private parties would then be able to invalidate patents that have already been granted and build on the knowledge contained in the database. "Given that the pharmaceutical innovation pipeline is drying up, innovators need to focus more on traditional knowledge that offers potentially unique insights for new drugs," he said.
In 2008 China's State Intellectual Property Office also allowed EPO examiners to access a 32,000-entry database on its traditional knowledge.
