Traditional Indian remedies digitised

[Celebration]

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/health1/traditional-indian-remedies-digitised_100290790.html

Drawing lessons from a bruising legal battle on turmeric, the government has digitised traditional Indian remedies and healing systems to prevent international pharmaceutical companies from claiming patents on them, parliament was informed Thursday.

“The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library contains details of all known Indian remedies and healing processes and the manner in which herbs and other items are used to effect this,” Prithviraj Chavan, the minister of state in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said during question hour in the Rajya Sabha.

“We have translated this into five languages and put it in the public domain. We are more than willing to share this knowledge with scholars but pharmaceutical companies won’t be able to claim patents on this,” he added.

“We learnt our lessons from the haldi (turmeric) episode,” he said, referring to the the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s (CSIR) prolonged legal battle to prevent the US Patent and Trademark Office from granting a patent for the product to a US firm

[avaistheone1]

1. Good for them.

India has learned a valuable lesson from their Monsanto experience.

[Trillo]

2. “We learnt our lessons from the haldi (turmeric) episode,”?

The quick entry I could find:

Let us turn now to haldi. Here again, contrary to media reports, the global patent system does not permit the patenting of turmeric. What can, however, be patented is a new application of turmeric. The Mississippi Medical Centre claimed it had found a new use, in healing wounds. Indian scientists proved that such knowledge already existed in ancient Indian manuals. In the light of this evidence, the US Patent and Trademarks Office struck down the patent.

http://www.swaminomics.org/articles/19970830_haldighati.htm

There's probably more about it elsewhere, but that satisfied my curiosity.

[Orrex]

3. That's actually a brilliant strategy, and quite noble IMO

A great many folk remedies offer little or no verifiable curative power, but it's very smart of them to document the remedies so that the effective ones aren't later denied to people via the dubious justification of claimed patent privilege.

Good for them!

:thumbsup: