India scored an important success when it fully protected its traditional knowledge by stalling a leading UK-based laboratory's move to patent a medicinal composition containing turmeric, pine bark and green tea for treating hair loss. The move comes just days after India foiled a similar attempt by USbased consumer goods giant Colgate-Palmolive to patent a mouthwash formula containing herbal extracts.
The vigilance of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) helped protect the Indian products as the council in its submission to the European Patent Office man aged to prove that turmeric, pine bark and green tea were being used as a treatment for hair loss in Indian systems of medicine like Ayurveda since ancient times.
The UK-based company , Pangaea Laboratories Limited, had filed the patent application in February 2011. The CSIR-TKDL unit had, however, objected to it and filed evidence on January 13, 2014, once the patent application was published in the European Patent Office website. Based on India's evidence, the patent application was finally “deemed to be withdrawn“ by the applicant on June 29 this year.
The back-to-back victories in thwarting the attempts of the two big foreign entities (Colgate-Palmolive and Pangaea Laboratories Limited) adds another feather to the cap of TKDL's which has tasted success now in about 200 such cases without incurring any cost to the public exchequer.
Recently , it frustrated a move by Colgate-Palmolive to patent a mouthwash formula containing herb `Jayaphal' (Nutmeg) extract. “The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library of CSIR, headed by senior scientist Archana Sharma, had submitted proof in the form of references from ancient books, which said the herb and its extracts of `Myristica Fragrans' were used for oral diseases in Indian systems of medicine“.
