Kounteya Sinha of the Times of India has recently reported on yet another success story of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL). I’m a little amused at the title though, which claims that ‘India foils Swiss MNC’s bio-piracy bid’. The patent application in question, which was filed by Nestec S.A. before the European Patent Office (EPO) was for the use of ‘cow-milk’ as a laxative in the treatment of constipation. How is this ‘bio-piracy’? Nestec probably used milk from Swiss cows and as far as I know India is yet to claim the mantle of protectors of the world’s cows. ‘Bio-piracy’ is when they plunder milk from India’s cows. The correct title should have been ‘India foils Swiss MNC’s bid to patent Traditional Knowledge’. Image from here. In any case, getting back to the crux of the story, the evidence to strike down the European Patent application was supplied by India’s Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL). The website of the TKDL provides some interesting statistics on the usage of the TKDL by foreign patent offices to deny patent applications. This is because a clause in the ‘access agreements’ which requires foreign patent offices to provide such statistics. Surprisingly, the TKDL website does not have any such statistics for the Indian Patent Office!
The EPO seems to be the most active in using the TKDL and has denied a total of 61 patent applications on the basis of evidence from the TKDL. A further 16 applications were modified on the basis of TKDL evidence. The Canadian follow with a total of 12 patent applications. Surprisingly the USPTO hardly seems to be using the TKDL. I’m not sure whether they are actually not using the TKDL or whether they are just not giving the TKDL the latest updated statistics of the usage of the library.
When asked about whether Indian Patent Office has access to TKDL, they simply referred to a link of the representative database available on the internet for everyone to have a look of how it works.(Ideally, they should have access to the original database which is not available on internet.)
Also, I just got to know that the examiners at Indian Patent Office have not yet been trained to use the database. I think that gives a hint as to why there aren’t any cases of the use of TKDL by Indian Patent Office
tkdl is a one man show with neglected workers, who are the base of this large and exciting work andno work could bedone without them. they are ayurved, yoga, unani and siddha experts (graduates and post graduates). it is shown that with a very small budget tkdl achieved a lot, but no one knows about the payment of workers. which is only 25000 and 18000 rupees per month. please help tkdl workers.
As a matter of curiosity, what could be the budget involved in this project?
Hi Mahima,
Thank you for those interesting tidbits. I have no idea as to how much was spent on the TKDL project. I’m guessing that it must have cost a pretty penny.
Prashant
As far as I know, it was ten crore for first five years.But there is no news as to the further sanctions which might have been done.
Having briefly looked into the prosecution file for the application, it looks to me like the story is totally wrong. The TKDL references were laughably vague compared to the references already cited by the European examiner, and would certainly be no more relevant. The application was deemed withdrawn as a result of no response being filed to an Article 94(3) report dated 8 June 2011, and the later filed 3rd party observations almost certainly had nothing to do with it. In my opinion, to be more useful the TKDL needs to be a lot more specific. In this case, the observations appear to have been a waste of effort as the application would most likely be refused anyway.