Friday, February 01, 2008 Patent on the turmeric plant By Clint Fabiosa & Andrew Ong I protect
IN 1995, the United States Patent Office made a mistake in granting a patent to Indian nationals covering the use of turmeric plant in healing wounds. Turmeric has been used for a long time in India to heal wounds and this has been documented in Indian publications.
Lack of information about traditional knowledge led to this kind of problem.
To correct this mistake, the US Patent Office, acting on a request for re-examination by the Indian Counsel for Scientific and Industrial Research, revoked the patent on the ground of lack of novelty.
Thus, this incident goes on to prove that publishing traditional knowledge and making this information available to the public is important. If traditional knowledge is documented, it cannot be patented.
In some countries, efforts are made to catalog traditional knowledge in digital databases to protect it from patent attempts. Digital databases would allow patent examiners from all over the world to search and examine traditional knowledge and prevent it from issuing a patent by mistake similar to the turmeric plant patent in 1995.
