NEW DELHI, INDIA, August 3, 2015 (Daily Pioneer): India has once again successfully protected its traditional knowledge by preventing an attempt by Europe’s Pangaea Laboratories to take a patent on a medicinal composition containing turmeric, pine bark, and green tea for treating hair loss. A senior official from the Union Science and Technology Ministry said that the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), a Unit of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), had located the patent application filed at European Patent office by Pangaea Laboratories.
It then filed pre-grant opposition along with prior-art evidences from the TKDL, proving that turmeric, pine bark and green tea, have long been used as a treatment for hair loss in Indian systems of medicine like Ayurveda and Unani. Sharing the details, the official said that the UK based company had filed the patent application at European Patent office in February, 2011. “In response, the CSIR-TKDL Unit filed evidences from TKDL on January 13, 2014 after the patent application got published on website, pursuant to which the patent application is finally deemed to be withdrawn by the applicant on June 29, 2015,” the official maintained.
TKDL is a collaborative project between CSIR and Union Ayush Ministry. The official said that after it was estimated that about 2,000 wrong patents concerning Indian systems of medicine were being granted every year at the international level, efforts were taken making available information contents in into five international languages –English, Japanese, French, German and Spanish.