New Delhi: Over 2.27 lakh rare medical formulations, which were part of the country’s ancient texts, have now been dug out, transcribed, documented and digitised into the path-breaking Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) to protect them from bio-pirates.
These include 1.22 lakh Unani formulations, 90,000 ayurveda and 15,000 Siddha formulations, which have been transcribed by the department of AYUSH and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) from ancient Indian texts written originally in Sanskrit, Arabic, Urdu, Persian and Tamil.
They have now been translated into five international languages English, Japanese, French, German and Spanish — for all intellectual property rights organisations across the world to refer to it whenever an application for patent comes up “from western biopirates”.
TKDL creator Dr V K Gupta told the TOI: “Our target is to document a total of 3,50,000 medical formulations of AYUSH in the next two years.”
India has also completed documenting 1,300 asanas and videographing 250 asanas which will soon be uploaded on the TKDL for the IPR organisations.
Dr Gupta said: “We will soon make public 50 of the most popular postures so that yoga teachers across the world can’t call them their creation and apply for patents.
“Chances of misappropriation with these postures are higher. Nine well-known yoga institutions in India have helped with the documentation,” Gupta said.
The TKDL will have photos and explanation of the postures. CSIR has screened through several ancient books like Srimad Bhagwat Gita, Vyas Bhashya, Yogasava Vijana, Hatha Praditika, Gheranda Samhita, Shiva Samhita, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and Sandra Satkarma to document all known asanas and yoga references,” Dr Gupta further went on adding.
According to TKDLs expert group, it takes an average of five to seven years to oppose a granted patent at international levels which may cost close to a million dollars.
Also 10 years ago, about 2,000 wrong patents concerning Indian systems of medicine were being granted annually at the international level. “Besides these, the TKDL is also thinking of documenting half a million traditional medicinal manuscripts, farmers’ knowledge, ancient Indian architectural styles, ancient handicraft designs, technologies that Indians were pioneers of — like shipbreaking and information on Indian food.
All these are threatened by intellectual property right problems,” Dr Gupta said.
CSIR seeks govt nod on data usage
The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is planning to seek the approval of the Union cabinet to use 1% of the data on traditional knowledge — digitised primarily for purposes of intellectual property rights — in the open forum to help develop affordable treatment of diseases like TB, malaria and filaria.
This was announced during an international conference on utilisation of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL). TNN
No comments:
Post a Comment