No Need Of IPRs For Protecting Traditional Knowledge 03/09/2015 by Intellectual Property Watch 8 Comments Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window) The views expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and are not associated with Intellectual Property Watch. IP-Watch expressly disclaims and refuses any responsibility or liability for the content, style or form of any posts made to this forum, which remain solely the responsibility of their authors. By R.S. Praveen Raj Traditional medicines Can’t we protect Traditional Knowledge without creating proprietary rights ? We should be careful in creating registrable rights on the Traditional Knowledge (TK), including Traditional Medicine Practices, and classifying TK under Intellectual Property Rights, which are private exclusive rights operating like a monopoly in practice. Patents create private spaces in the knowledge arena (though for a short duration), and therefore no private appropriation should be allowed in the realm of TK. Traditional Knowledge protection shall mean ‘in situ’ perpetual protection and its sustainable development. Since TK is not definitive in terms its geographical origin, completeness and custodians, the ownership should be attributed to the State only, given the fact that TK is an accumulated traditional wealth and the long kept preserve of its practitioners, tribal communities and families, wherein all of them acted as deemed “trustees” of the State. Traditional Knowledge Docketing System (TKDS) vs TKDL A “Traditional Knowledge Docketing System (TKDS)” (an Information System) shall be created instead of registers, to indicate the location at which the Traditional Knowledge is available, the community that possesses the TK, and a short description of nature of TK and the COMMUNITY PROTOCOL if any. The Communities should be empowered to take appropriate intellectual property rights on the innovations made by them on the TK and to negotiate with the potential customers by forming Societies/Trusts of their own. It is dangerous to create “registers” and ‘registries’ of TK, as registering ‘rights’ make them absolute. “Compulsory licensing”, “license or right” etc. won’t provide solution as the “rights are intact” on registration. Any attempt to enable codification of community-held TK in the form of Traditional Knowledge Digital Libraries (TKDL) using “Prior Informed Consent” and “Access and Benefit Sharing” concepts is a gross injustice to those communities, as TKDL is being shared with Patent Offices across the world as “prior art” in an easy-to-access format on the presumption that the database would be used for search and examination only. The Patent Offices are obliged not to make any third party disclosure except for the purpose of giving a copy to the inventor/applicant as citation, since the definition of “prior art” encompasses everything that has been published, presented or otherwise disclosed to public on the date of patent and includes documents in foreign languages disclosed in any format in any country. But it is hard for the Patent Offices to keep the contents of the TKDL secret from third parties, since no patent could be denied without disclosing the entire gamut of coded traditional knowledge (TK) associated with the invention to the claimant to prove that it is “prior art”. Those persons may either use it secretly for commercial advantage or put it in the public domain and hence seriously affecting the livelihood of TK practitioners. It is going to be a great opportunity for fraudsters to file patent applications purely on conceptual grounds (as if they had performed the invention), only to see that they could fetch the authentic information on a TK practice/product. Documentation may be done only in the case of ‘TK in public domain’ in national interest. Of course, the TKDL is the right strategy to prevent the direct misappropriation of Traditional Knowledge already in the public domain and known to a large cross-section of people (wound-healing property of turmeric for example), though it bears the risk of patenting attempts on cosmetic improvements on such TK that is not accessible otherwise. Kerala Ayurveda Legislation for Protecting TK – Lessons from Kerala IPR Policy, 2008 (A new concept from EAST in opposition to the “ACCESS and BENEFIT sharing” concept from WEST that enhances bio-prospecting. If the western world can introduce a concept of trading intellectual property through TRIPS, then why can’t EAST have a concept to counter it ?) IPR Policy of Kerala, 2008 does not support extending ” trade secret” protection to TK, and the State is against ‘creating monopoly over knowledge’. Hence, the Policy proposes to commit all traditional knowledge, including traditional medicines, to the realm of “knowledge commons” and not to the public domain. Knowledge commons refers to the knowledge which is the collectively produced sphere of ideas and which is left unencumbered for the greater benefit of all. The Policy takes refuge in a logic that rights exist on Traditional Knowledge (TK) as per “Common Law” and its ownership is attributable to the State, given the fact that TK is an accumulated traditional wealth and the long kept preserve of its practitioners, tribal communities and families, wherein all of them acted as deemed “trustees” of the State. In abstract, the intention of the proposed legislation is “not exactly the creation of rights on TK” but assigning some (not all) of the rights owned by the State to those deemed trustees in lieu of their willingness to put the TK to the realm of “knowledge commons”. Kerala IPR Policy proposes to acknowledge the ‘deemed rights’ for the Traditional Knowledge holders and to make them aware of their rights. While the Policy envisages ‘deemed rights’ on traditional knowledge, all the rights holders will be deemed to be holding their rights under a “Commons License”, wherein the rights holders shall permit others the use of the knowledge in their possession for non-commercial purposes. It is further stipulated that any development made using this knowledge licensed under the above obligation should be put back to the realm of “Knowledge Commons”, say “Traditional Knowledge Commons”, and hence denying the scope of patenting thereof. (Though the Policy envisages putting the developments made on TK back to the realm of Knowledge Commons, path-breaking inventions like development of a new drug molecule or the process thereof which involves substantial developmental costs need not form a part even if TK may form the basis of its origin) The word “Commons License” used here is based on the fundamental concept of “Creative Commons” employed by open source advocates, but its scope varies significantly from that of “Creative Commons License”. Specific provisions for such “Traditional Knowledge Commons License” will have to be worked out to ensure free, non-commercial reproduction and codification of the Traditional Knowledge. It shall be a kind of “deemed license” which immediately applies on the user of TK, the moment the user decides to employ it for any purpose. The provisions for governing the deemed license/community protocols will have to be laid down in the legislation. In respect of such TK, where it is the livelihood of numerous practitioners strewn across Kerala, the State will be deemed to have the absolute rights over such Traditional Knowledge. Even though State holds the ownership on such TK, all the actual practitioners of this TK will have an autonomous license for right of commercial use from the State. But these Licensees are not empowered to sub-license this right of commercial use to anybody else, and the right for transferring licenses will solely be enjoyed by the State. Therefore the ultimate aim of the legislation is not to protect the financial interests of the TK holders but the benefit of the society at large, as is the case with the fundamental concept of patents. R.S. Praveen Raj is a former Indian patent examiner and social activist. Currently, he is working as Senior Scientist in India’s premier research organisation CSIR. He played a key role in devising IPR Policy of Kerala 2008, which moots a nuanced approach for protection of traditional knowledge. He also campaigns against misuse of IP laws for Commercialisation of religious faith in India. Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window) Related "No Need Of IPRs For Protecting Traditional Knowledge" by Intellectual Property Watch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Graham Dutfield says 05/09/2015 at 11:23 am This is a confusing article. What needs to be stressed is that for states to claim sovereign rights over all TK would be a violation of the rights of indigenous peoples. Governments are already a bigger problem than companies. The notion that TK holders should ask the government for a license to use their own knowledge is extraordinary to me. Reply
R S Praveen Raj says 08/09/2015 at 5:16 pm @Graham Dutfield – Are you sure that TK is the private property of indigenous community ? Please read the following article and comments from IP kAT Blog – http://ipkitten.blogspot.in/2015/07/knowledge-is-power-traditional.html Reply
Graham Dutfield says 29/09/2015 at 9:46 am Well the point is that one cannot have a general legal approach to “TK”. Most of it has been in the public domain for vast periods of time and is nobody’s property, certainly not any state government’s. In other cases, the situation is far more complex. But what cannot be right is for the state to come in and claim it. Generally speaking governments do nothing to support traditional knowledge in situ. So why should they suddenly step in when they perceive it has commercial value? Reply
R S Praveen Raj says 09/09/2015 at 6:56 am Prevention patenting on TK – What to be documented and what not ? Traditional Knowledge is existing knowledge and not “inventions” and hence its patenting should be prevented. Section 3(p) of Indian Patents Act, 1970 says that “traditional knowledge or which is an aggregation or duplication of known properties of traditionally known component or components” should not be allowed to get a Patent. However Patent could be denied only if documented proof is available. TKDL serves the above purpose. It is also important to make the database available to all the researchers. But TKDL is not yet shared with researchers. Curcumin Research Database (http://crdb.in/editorial.php), which is open for access to all is good strategy. Then keeping TKDL as a secret database and allowing access of TKDL to Patent offices under secrecy agreement is a futile exercise (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/thiruvananthapuram/Digitization-under-biopiracy-cloud/articleshow/48853670.cms), since secrecy cannot be maintained, when TKDL is treated as prior art. TK Digital Libraries, of course, leaves the scope for private appropriation of TK by making cosmetic improvements, since patenting of invention based on TK is patentable. Therefore such documentation should be done on TK known to public at large (Wound healing property of Turmeric etc.), so that there should not be any issue of secrecy for such TK Databases. Any attempt to codify community-held TK in the form of Traditional Knowledge Digital Libraries (TKDL) using “Prior Informed Consent” and “Access and Benefit Sharing” concepts would be a gross injustice to those communities if the knowledge was shared with patent offices or even with Researchers (http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/caution-on-classifying-traditional-knowledge-under-ipr/article7589338.ece) Reply
Graham Dutfield says 29/09/2015 at 9:56 am I agree with you about the TKDL. Where I differ is the assumption that all TK is “existing knowledge”. That for me is the problem. The Convention on Biological Diversity refers to “knowledge, innovations and practices” of indigenous and local communities. This is an acknowledgement that TK is not static, and novelty (innovations) are thus an inherent feature. Sadly, the idea it is all old knowledge gives people justification to afford it such a low status. The now discredited post-War modernisation theory saw development in terms of the wholesale replacement of tradition with modernity. In fact, epistemologically, the traditional/modern dichotomy is highly questionable. Reply
R.S. Praveen Raj says 11/09/2015 at 10:39 am Kudos to Gopika for this excellent piece about TK in Spicy IP. This article has lot of relevance in the light of upcoming General Assembly of member states of WIPO in October 2015, scheduled to discuss inter alia an international scheme for protection of TK and rights of indigenous communities. What is to be prevented at this stage is the attempt to put in place a frame work for protection of TK by creating new kind of private and proprietary rights (Intellectual Property Rights) and making of TK registers. Kerala IPR Policy may have many inherent flaws. While “TK Docketing system” and “deemed rights” are at conceptual levels only now, the intention is to moot an alternative to IPR route for protection of TK. TK Digital Libraries may be continued as a defensive mechanism in respect of TK already written down in ancient texts and manuscripts (like THALIYOLAS). However there are attempt to codify community-held TK (Not yet written down anywhere) using “Prior Informed Consent” and “Access and Benefit Sharing” concepts. It would be a gross injustice to those communities if such TK is put in to Traditional Knowledge Digital Libraries (TKDL) and shared with patent offices or even with Researchers. TK communities should be empowered and educated to negotiate the protection of TK through existing legal mechanisms. Reply
[…] viewed with the Kerala Draft Bill will probably have a counter effect of encouraging biopiracy. As argued by Mr. Praveen Raj, Senior Scientist, CSIR-NIIST, Thiruvananthapuram, creating registerable rights […] Reply
[…] depth discussion here on strategies for addressing intellectual property rights for natural agents […] Reply