New Delhi

Hands off: India blocked a US attempt to patent turmeric. Credit: ©JOHN MASON/ARDEA

India has launched a programme to create digital databases of its traditional knowledge — for example, of herbs with medical properties — that will be accessible to national patent offices in other countries, particularly the United States and Japan.

According to Ragunath Mashelkar, secretary to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, the move is intended to prevent foreigners taking out patents on such knowledge. India argued strongly for the protection of such knowledge at the recent ICSU/Unesco World Conference on Science in Budapest.

By establishing the existence of ‘prior art’, the databases are intended to prevent patents being granted for traditional Indian cures and remedies such as turmeric.

About two years ago, India successfully challenged the turmeric patent held by a US university (see Nature 389, 6; 1997). But it has failed to prevent patents on ‘basmati’ rice (see Nature 391, 728; 1998) or, more recently, on an anti-diabetic substance from bitterguard, a plant traditionally used for food and treating diabetes.

Mashelkar says that documenting traditional knowledge in India will involve translating and digitizing 250 ancient texts, and examining thousands of scientific publications from the past 100 years or more. But the US$1 million needed to create the database network is expected to save much more than that in the costs of contesting individual patents in foreign courts.

“We do not have the time or money to fight each patent,” says Mashelkar. “The answer is to ensure that the patent is not awarded in the first place, by making databases of traditional knowledge available to patent examiners.”

The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research has set up a unit in Pune, near Mumbai (formerly Bombay), to digitize traditional knowledge, and Mashelkar, who heads the council, says that the work will be completed in one year.

He points out that the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) suggested to India that it should create the database. According to USPTO, the turmeric patent might not have been issued if such a database had existed. In a letter to Mashelkar last month, USPTO official Robert Saifer admitted that the examiner who issued the patent “was not aware” of literature on the use of turmeric in wound healing in India.