India’s initiative to combat biopiracy

The past decade has witnessed an increasing growth in demands and applications for the protection of traditional and indigenous knowledge systems from profit-hungry commercial interests, usually attributed to behemothic multi-national pharmaceutical corporations. Public protests and campaigns by academics, religious leaders, parliamentarians and environment NGOs have marked the continual struggle against biopiracy.

No wonder then that when in early March this year the European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich dismissed an appeal against revoking a patent, covering the use of neem as a fungicide, that it had granted in 1995 to the US Department of Agriculture and the multinational WR Grace, it was hailed as a major triumph for the Third World’s no-holds-barred battle against rampant biopiracy and India’s long-standing endeavor to protect its indigenous and rich knowledge base from being hijacked by commercial interests. Way back in 1997, the United States Patent and Trademarks Office (USPTO) was forced to cancel a patent covering the use of turmeric for healing wounds and infections, that it had granted in 1995 to two researchers from the University of Mississippi Medical Centre.

After scoring these crucial and well-deserved victories, India is now entering into an agreement with the EPO to enable the EPO to reject patent requests where long-established knowledge is passed off as innovation. This initiative is being given shape by the National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCIR) in conjunction with the Department of Ayurveda, Unani, Sidha, Homoeopathy and Yoga (Ayush) under the aegis of the Ministry of Science and Technology. NISCIR will be preparing a digital database of at least 136,000 traditional Indian medicines that will be referred to by the EPO while considering patent applications for innovations of botanical origin.

Now it remains to be seen whether this step will suffice in stemming the recurrence of biopiracy.