Europe and India collaborate on natural medicine

India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the European Patent Office (EPO) have signed an agreement allowing the EPO to access its Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), the EPO said on Wednesday.

The agreement gives EPO examiners online access to information related to Indian traditional knowledge in all phases of the European patent grant procedure as governed by the European Patent Convention.

The growing global demand for natural medicine has led to increased international exchange of information on traditional knowledge and more cooperation between India and other countries on the development of traditional systems of medicine. In this respect, TKDL, a database of Indian traditional medicine, is the result of a project launched in 1999 by the National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR), CSIR, the Ministry of Science & Technology and Department of AYUSH, and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of India.

The main purpose of TKDL is to make Indian traditional knowledge prior art accessible to patent offices, translating Indian traditional knowledge from existing prior art, traditional knowledge formulations or know-how, available in Hindi, Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Urdu and other languages, into five international languages (English, French, German, Spanish and Japanese). The aim is to prevent commercial appropriation of lndian traditional knowledge already available in the public domain.

TKDL is the traditional knowledge database that has attracted the most public attention in recent years, and access to this database has great political significance internationally in the field of patents.

This addition to the EPO search collection supplements an already impressive amount of data relating to traditional knowledge from various countries, which enables EPO examiners to properly assess the innovative value of inventions in this field.

Click here for more on the agreement.