Thaindian News

New Delhi, Apr 20 (ANI): The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), India, signed the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) access agreement with the Japan Patent Office (JPO) here today. The agreement would help prevent misappropriation of India’s traditional knowledge at JPO. It also successfully concludes the arrangement of protection of India’s traditional knowledge with ‘trilateral offices’ like United States Patent and Trademark Office, European Patent Office and Japan Patent Office. This is considered significant as most of the international patent applications get filed at least in one of these trilateral offices. Rejection of a patent application at any one of these offices would facilitate its rejection at any other international patent office.TKDL access agreement has in-built safeguards on non-disclosure to protect India’s interest against any possible misuse. Under the agreement, the patent examiners at International Patent Offices can utilize TKDL for patent search and examination purpose only and cannot reveal the content to any third party unless it is necessary for citation purpose. TKDL, a collaborative project between CSIR and department of AYUSH, is a maiden Indian effort to help prevent misappropriation of traditional knowledge belonging to India at International Patent Offices. Earlier, India has signed such agreement with several other International Patent Offices, like United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), European Patent Office (EPO), German Patent Office, Patent Office of Australia, Canada Patent Office (CIPO) and United Kingdom Trademark & Patent Office (UKPTO), during the last two years. The agreement signed with EPO in particular has resulted into remarkable success in preventing bio-piracy of Indian traditional knowledge at EPO. (ANI)