A leading US food supplement manufacturer and vitamin store chain, Great Earth Companies Inc, secured trade mark rights for Jeevani, originally developed by the CSIR's Tropical Botanical Garden & Research Institute (TBGRI), Thiruvananthapuram, a decade ago.
The US company uses Jeevani in its widely marketed product 'Jeevani Jolt 1000' without infringing the IP rights of original Jeevani, the world renowned ethno-pharmacological herbal compound. Ingredients mentioned in the product are the same as that in original Jeevani, such as withanis somnifera (ashwagandha), piper longum, and evolvalus alsinoides besides, the main ingredient arogyapacha.
Interestingly, Nutrisciences Innovations LLC, the New York based firm which initially applied to secured trademark rights, has withdrawn its claim due to the controversy erupted in India an year ago, spurred by the Pharmabiz newsbreak on 27th January 2004. The US company Great Earth applied for trademark in December 2000 and it was granted in March 2002 by USPTO, with the registration number 2553741.
According to the company literature, the product has 'Trichopus zeylanicus together with other herbs in a botanical complex named Jeevani'.
"Successful clinical trials were conducted with Jeevani, making it available in the Western world as an energiser, 'anti-stress' adaptogen, and immune system supporter. Among the Kani tribes of Kerala, trichopus is known as arogyappacha, meaning green health and vitality" elaborates the company literature. The product is sold at a price of USD 21.99 per 60 capsules, instead of the original Jeevani sold in granules form.
According to the claims of this company, for over 30 years, Great Earth has been manufacturing the finest vitamins, minerals herbs and nutritional supplements and is one of the few FDA pharmaceutical laboratories in the US, which manufacture nutritional supplements. Unlike most supplement companies that subcontract their work, Great Earth makes its own products at its state-of-the-art facilities. The company also runs one of the largest chains of vitamin and food stores across almost all major cities in US.
It may be noted that Jeevani, the globally renowned herbal drug, does not enjoy a global patent protection even a decade after its development, but only has an Indian process patent which is not valid in international markets. Even one year after the Pharmabiz report and the resultant controversy, the original inventor of the drug, TBGRI, is yet to apply for patent protection in international markets. Confusion also prevails whether the process patent of Jeevani is still valid in India.
As reported earlier, Jeevani is also used as an active ingredient in many herbal products marketed in the US. It is a major ingredient in the top selling energiser and health fitness enhancing drug in the world, Pinnacles' adrenerlin capsule, as claimed by its body building and health fitness drug maker Bodyonics Ltd. Some of the websites also talk about Jeevani as a 'miraculous herb from Himalayas' and an active ingredient in herbal tea. A company also has been floated in the US with the name Jeevani Co. LLC to market Jeevani. Not lagging behind, an Indian manufacturer in Gwalior also had come out with Jeevani malt. Though nutrisciences has withdrawn its trademark claim, it still sells Jeevani in the US market.
Jeevani was developed by the scientists led by Dr. P. Pushpagandagan, the then director of TBGRI, taking lead from the Kani tribal community in the Western Ghats. TBGRI ensured to share the license fee and royalty with the tribal community on 1:1 basis and thus India became the first in the world to recognise the Intellectual Property Rights of a tribal community and thereby implemented the Article 8(j) of the UN-Convention of Biological Diversity. This model of benefit sharing is now widely appreciated in the world over and referred as TBGRI model or Pushpangadan Model of Benefit Sharing. On the invitation of UNEP, Dr. Pushpangadan made a presentation of this model at UNEP Centre at Geneva. He was awarded the prestigious UN- Equator Initiative Award in 2002 for the same during the UN Summit held at Johanessburg in Aug-Sept 2002.
During the 2000-'01 period, Padmasree Prof. Anil K Guptha, coordinator of the Ahmedabad-based NGO Sristi and Honey Bee network, had done an extensive study on Jeevani and had alerted the scientific communities and authorities about the trademark right infringement, as part of a World Intellectual Property organisation (WIPO) study on 'The role of IPRs in the sharing of benefits arising from the use of biological resources and associated traditional knowledge,' based on the data collected from Mali, Nigeria and India.
"The research programme over the past 12 years has demonstrated that the importance of this medicinal plant alone or in association with other ingredients, as combined in the Jeevani drug, could be higher than that of Ginseng without any steroid being present in it. Its potential was acknowledged in prestigious journals like Nature and magazines like Time. Recently, the drug has been featured on the cover page of top sports and fitness magazines which claimed that having gone through successful clinical trials, Jeevani will soon be made available in the US as an energiser, adaptogen and immune stimulator (2000). It has also been included in Chinese/Japanese medicine such as 'Shosaikoto' with considerable clinical effect. One company in the United States of America has also registered a trademark of 'Jeevani' for sale of the same drug in the US. There is another company which is soliciting plants and seeds of arogyapaacha. This drug, based as it is on traditional knowledge of the Kani tribe, seems to have tremendous potential in global markets for natural health care products and sports medicines," Dr. Guptha had alerted in his report.
The study had highlighted the fact that the patent applications filed on drugs based on arogyapaacha were all national process patent applications and none had been granted, even many years after commercialisation, and observed international patent applications should have been filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty administered by WIPO, to protect the formulation in countries other than India. The study also criticised the fact that the role of traditional Kani healers in the drug development was not recognised by the benefit-sharing arrangements, and the tribal informants were not named as co-inventors in the patent application. Dr. Guptha also had noted the faults related to the benefit sharing arrangements between the Kani community and TBGRI.