Intellectual Property Rights and Traditional Knowledge

Traditional Knowledge, Genetic Resources and Folklore: Working in co-operation with UNESCO and other international organizations, and in dialogue with NGOs, The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) provides a forum for international policy debate concerning the interplay between intellectual property (IP) and traditional knowledge, genetic resources, and traditional cultural expressions. WIPO is developing draft legal mechanisms and a range of practical tools aimed at enhancing the intellectual property interests of the holders of such knowledge, resources and expressions.

The Traditonal Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) proposes to document the knowledge covering Ayurveda that is available in the public domain by sifting and collating the information on traditional knowledge from the existing literature. The collection is to be published online in digitized format in five languages: English, German, French, Japanese and Spanish. Traditional Knowledge Resource Classification (TKRC), an innovative structured classification system for the purpose of systematic arrangement, dissemination and retrieval has been evolved for the effort. TKDL is a collaborative project between The Indian National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR) and Department of Indian System of Medicine and Homoeopathy (ISM&H), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. An inter-disciplinary team of 25 Ayurveda experts, 1 patent examiner, 5 IT experts, 3 NISCAIR scientists and 4 technical officers are in place at present for carrying out the work. TKDL seeks to "safeguard the sovereignty of this traditional knowledge" and to protect such knowledge from being misused by in patenting on non-original discoveries.