Traditional Knowledge Digital Library

India is creating an online database of traditional knowledge to prevent unscrupulous types from trying to patent and profit off of them. The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TDKL) will contain everything from herbal medicines to yoga positions. From the story in the Christian Science Monitor:

"We do not want anyone selling our own knowledge to us," says Ajay Dua, a top bureaucrat in the Department of Industrial Policy and Planning, which oversees intellectual-property rights. "Also, we would like anyone using our traditional knowledge to acknowledge that it is from India."

These concerns are not unfounded. In the past decade, India has fought several costly legal battles to get patents revoked. The impetus for TKDL came in 1997, after India successfully managed to get a US patent on the wound-healing properties of turmeric revoked.

"This patent claimed the wound-healing properties as a novel finding, whereas practically every Indian housewife knows and uses it to heal wounds," says R. A. Mashelkar, chief of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

Read the full story here.

This seems to be the official TKDL site here.