The recommendation of the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation and Public Health (CIPIH) on traditional medicines, if adopted by the World Health Assembly, could be of immense benefit to biodiversity rich countries like India.

The commission has suggested that all countries should ensure that digital libraries of traditional medical knowledge is incorporated into the minimum search documentation lists of patent offices to ensure that the data contained within them will be considered during the processing of patent applications. It also wanted holders of the traditional knowledge to play a crucial role in deciding whether such knowledge is included in any databases and also benefit from any commercial exploitation of the information.

"All countries should consider how best to fulfil the objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity. This could be, for instance, through the establishment of appropriate national regimes for prospecting for genetic resources and for their subsequent utilization and commercialization through contractual agreements," the report said. It should be made sure that the disclosure of information in the patent application of the geographical source of genetic resources from which the invention is derived and other means is made mandatory, it added.

Interestingly, the efforts of India to digitalize its traditional knowledge were highly appreciated by the commission. It has highlighted the efforts of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to address this problem. "A modern classification based on the structure of the International Patent Classification has been evolved. A classification has been attempted for the traditional Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha systems of medicine. The classification provides for a systematic arrangement of knowledge, and also easy dissemination and retrieval of data," the report described Indian efforts.

It should be noted that CSIR has recently been approaching the patent offices across the country to ensure that the digital data base provided by them are searched before granting patents to drugs based on traditional medicines. The WHO support to the CSIR would certainly help the country protect its IPR in traditional medicines, it is felt.