TKDL: Worthiness Proven Once Again
Pangaea Laboratories Limited, a UK-based company is a cosmeceutical research and development giant. In February, 2011 Pangaea filed a patent application in the European Patent Office (EPO) for a medicinal composition containing turmeric, pine bark and green tea for treating hair loss.
However, once the patent application was published on the website of the EPO, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) with the help of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), which is a Indian digital repository of the myriad traditional knowledge, especially medically based, that is part of India’s tradition and culture since ancient times, filed an objection with evidence on January 13, 2014.
CSIR in its submissions proved to the EPO that turmeric, pine bark and green tea are being used as hair loss treatment in the Indian medical systems like Ayurveda and Unani since the time of the Vedas.
Based on the evidence and submissions by CSIR, the said application was “deemed to be withdrawn” on June 29, 2015.
This comes soon after TKLD recently also led to the down-fall of a patent application by Colgate-Palmolive in respect of a mouthwash formula containing ‘Jayaphal’ (Nutmeg).
TKDL is a one of a kind Indian database which has proven to be a strong deterrent against the misuse/misappropriation of our country’s traditional knowledge in Patent Offices around the World.
TKDL has successfully brought down nearly 200 such patent applications that were based on Indian Traditional Knowledge not only in Europe but also in the United States of America and other countries, being a vast and structured database that has classified the Indian traditional medicine system in approximately 25,000 sub-groups for Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Yoga.