(31 Jan 2025) The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) joined the growing number of national patent offices across the world on 24 January 2025 to have exclusive access to India’s digital repository of its traditional medical systems, with the conclusion of the requisite agreement between the two countries this month.
Established in 2001 as a joint project of India’s Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) and Department of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (AYUSH), the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) houses an extensive body of information on medicinal plants and formulations used in traditional Indian medicine systems.
Currently, the TKDL database boasts of about 515,000 formulations and practices from Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha, Yoga and Sowa Rigpa. Efforts are ongoing to include traditional Indian agricultural and metallurgical knowledge into the library.
Finalized on 20 January this year, the Access Agreement with the CSIR allows the IPOPHL to access information for effectively assessing patent applications involving traditional Indian systems, and forestalling the faulty or erroneous grant of patents.
The news in full is here.
