News Report
NEW DELHI, INDIA, November 6, 2003. A database of 36,000 traditional medicine formulations translated from ancient Ayurvedic texts has emerged as India’s tool to fight unfair international patents. The database of formulations based on medicinal plants and herbs used in India for centuries will be made available to patent authorities in the US, Europe, Japan and elsewhere. The database is intended to prevent international patents offices from honoring unfair claims such as the patent on turmeric as a wound healing agent issued by the US patents office to US-based scientists in the mid-1990s. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) had successfully got the US patent on turmeric revoked as a patent is valid only if an invention is not in the public domain. The first phase of the database project involved documenting information on Ayurveda in a digitized format in English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese where researchers around the world will be able to use this library. International patent examiners had until now no source to fall back on when considering the patentability of any claimed invention dealing with traditional knowledge. The knowledge database would provide an easily accessible and retrievable source of knowledge for patent examiners to verify claims. HPI would appreciate knowing how one can access this database.