Traditional Knowledge Digital Library
The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) was established in the year 2001.
The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) is a collaborative project between the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Department of AYUSH. The same is a home-grown effort to ensure patent offices around the world do not grant
patents for applications founded on India’s wealth of age-old Traditional Knowledge.
Digitalization of the traditional medicinal knowledge which is available in public domain in the form of existing literature is related to codified systems of Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Yoga.
The TKDL is a unique, proprietary database that integrates diverse knowledge systems
and languages. It is based on 148 books of prior art relating to Indian systems of medicine, available at a cost of around US$1,000.
Access to around 3,30,044 Traditional Medicinal Formulations is available in patent compatible format in five international languages under TKDL Access Agreement to 10 Patent Offices, namely EPO, USPTO, JPO, CIPO, UKPTO, IP Australia, IPO, DPMA-German, Chile and Malaysia.
The idea to establish a TKDL came into the picture amid India’s efforts to revoke the patent granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on the wound healing properties of turmeric and the patent granted by the European Patent
Office (EPO) on the antifungal properties of neem.
By using the information technology tools and the Traditional Knowledge Resource
Classification System (TKRC), the library has been successful in converting and structuring ancient texts into 34 million A4-sized pages along the lines of a patent
application.
The TDKL is an effective mechanism for defensive protection, facilitating the prior art
search and bridging the language barrier.
The ancient texts have been translated into various languages viz. English, French,
German, Japanese and Spanish.
