Impact of TKDL on Patent Applications in the Field of Bio-resources and the Associated TK

Abstract

After the incidents of bio-piracy and bio-patenting of Indian bio-resources and the associated traditional knowledge, India has successfully initiated an institutional mechanism named Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL). Such Traditional Knowledge (TK) databases help to establish prior-art and therefore disprove patentability, protect the county’s TK from wrong patenting. As being codified in such a way, the database enables timely and economically establishing non-patentability of inventions based on biological TK. India as a country has become the first in the world to have such a tool. TKDL is an open prior art model to keep a check against bio-piracy. Here in this work, India’s TKDL impacts on patent applications in the field of traditional knowledge associated with bio-resources have been evaluated. TKDL has around 34 million pages that include 2.90 million compositions of the diverse medicine system of India. Thepaper discloses various remarkable particulars associated to bio-piracy, bio-prospecting, and how TKDL is acting as a protecting shield against them, thus showing effectiveness of the TKDL with the help of discussed case studies.