EU to protect traditional medicine from piracy

NEW DELHI: The European Patent Office (EPO) has, in principle, agreed to make a conscious effort to block anyone from stealing patents of India’s traditional knowledge in medicine.

This will ensure that instances like the patenting of turmeric’s medicinal property in the US, does not occur in the 30-member superstate. India had earlier spent $6m to bust the US patent on turmeric.

A non-disclosure agreement between the Union science and technology ministry and the EPO is expected soon, which will give EPO access to a digital database of at least 136,000 traditional Indian medicines.

EPO will protect this highly valuable information and refer it routinely while reviewing patent applications where the innovation is of botanical origin. This will make it easy for the EPO to reject patent requests where centuries-old knowledge is passed off as innovation.

The National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCIR) under the science and technology ministry is developing the nearly one crore page digital database of Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani medicines.

This project of the department of Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (Ayush) has been approved by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and the draft agreement is now being vetted by the law ministry.

NISCIR is representing the government in talks with various patent offices, including those in the US, the UK, Japan and Sweden. Once the agreement with the EPO is signed, it will be able to strongly persuade the US patent office, which, according to a ’03 study, has inappropriately granted nearly 380 patents involving India’s traditional knowledge and biological resources.