ELECTIONS '98
COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

Over 100 Indian plants patented, warns expert

More than 100 Indian plants, besides neem and turmeric, have already been patented in the developed world.

The trend was likely to continue if India did not take steps to protect its precious biological resources, according to a recent report by the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology.

The US patents office had already granted 14 patents on mustard, seven on castor, four on amla, three each for cassia, and kumari and two for bitter gourd, black cumin, jatropha and black nightshade for their various properties, says the report by Afsar H Jafri, a senior research officer at the Doon-based foundation.

The report lists 22 medicinal and agricultural plants, including ritha, amaltas, kumari, pomegranate, balsam and Rangoon creeper that have been patented in America and Europe.

The US tops the list with the maximum number of patents for Indian plants, followed by Japan, Canada, France, Germany and the UK, says Jafri. Other plants patented by these countries include arjun, harad, jangli, guruchi, vilayeti shishamand chottagokhuru.

The patenting of neemand turmeric has highlighted the need for a legal system to protect indigenous knowledge from such intellectual piracy, Jafri said.

''In the absence of a protection system for biodiversity and indigenous knowledge systems, and with the encroaching universalism of western-style intellectual property rights regimes, intellectual and biological piracy is growing,'' he says, adding that such diversity of knowledge needs to be recognised and respected, and that a pluralistic IPR regime that respects indigenous knowledge has to be evolved.

In India, common resource knowledge-based innovations have been passed down for centuries and adopted for newer uses. These innovations, he said, have been absorbed into the common pool of knowledge that has contributed to the vast agricultural and medicinal plant diversity of India.

UNI

Tell us what you think of this report