INDIA’S BATTLE AGAINST BIOPIRACY AND THE PATENT SYSTEM’S BLIND SPOTS

Abstract

For centuries, Indian healers, farmers, and communities have cultivated a vast body of knowledge — from the well-documented antiseptic and wound-healing properties of turmeric to the proven pest-repellent qualities of neem. Yet when foreign corporations filed patents over these age-old resources in Western patent offices, the world witnessed one of intellectual property law’s most glaring failures: the systematic appropriation of traditional knowledge without acknowledgement, consent, or compensation. This blog examines the phenomenon of biopiracy, the structural inadequacies of the global patent system in recognising traditional knowledge as prior art, and the legal and institutional steps India has taken to safeguard what has always rightfully been its own.

INTRODUCTION

Intellectual property law’s central premise is a promise of return on true invention. A patent holder’s sole right is a monopoly for a finite time in return for public disclosure of invention. Underlying all of this is the implicit understanding that what is claimed must truly be new and non-obvious. But what about the claim to a patent over knowledge practiced openly by a whole civilization for millennia? 

This is biopiracy. Biopiracy can be defined as the unauthorized and uncompensated appropriation of resources or knowledge that are derived from indigenous and local communities (usually through patent systems). As one of the world’s most diverse homes to traditional knowledge concerning folk medicine, agriculture and biodiversity, India has been one of the hardest hit by the wave of patent filings. Notable cases, such as those of turmeric, neem and Basmati rice, brought the deep systemic failures in existing international patent systems into sharp relief and triggered a global discussion around one critical question: whose knowledge is ‘prior art’ and which invention qualifies for protection?

BIOPIRACY AND THE PATENT SYSTEM’S BLIND SPOT:

 In case of a patent the novelty, inventive step and industrial application have been checked for the invention. If a particular thing has been known or used, then question of its novelty comes and on that basis no patents are generally allowed. But in the US and European patent examiners could not access or were unaware of Non-English or Non-digitized traditional knowledge sources such as ancient Sanskrit texts, oral traditions or folk practices. This was one reason which had contributed to the undue granting of patents on Indian traditional knowledge.

THE COMMON CITED EXAMPLE;

TURMERIC 1995; 

USPTO awarded a patent on the use of turmeric in wound healing to two scientists from the University of Mississippi Medical Center in 1995. CSIR challenged the patent by presenting traditional Indian knowledge through ancient Sanskrit texts and older publications. The USPTO revoked the patent in 1997 — a landmark victory, though one that required extraordinary effort simply to undo a grave injustice.

THE NEEM CASE; 

The W.R. Grace, a big company, had received a patent in 1994, on Neem oil to be used as pesticide. This case was a long one; Indian farmers, social activists and government faced legal battles for over decade in courts, finally the patent was revoked in 2005. However the issue which highlighted is that, century old traditional farming practices of Indian farmers, due to their absence in the Western patent data-base, were granted as inventions.

THE CASE REGARDING ECONOMIC ASPEC, OF BASMATI RICE; 

1997. RiceTec Inc, a Texas based company has been given patent on varieties of Basmati rice in 1997. India challenged it on the ground that Basmati is an original indigenous crop and has a significant heritage. Majority of the initial patent claims of RiceTec were withdrawn. It has illustrated potential of private appropriation of an important crop evolved by Indian agricultural communities over centuries.

INDIA’S INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSE: THE TKDL;

India proactively initiated the creation of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) as a large-scale effort to document and digitise traditional knowledge, ensuring it could no longer be misappropriated through foreign patent systems.

Managed by the Ministry of AYUSH and CSIR, the project includes records of over 290,000 remedies from traditional Indian medicine. It is based on works including the Charaka Samhita, Sushruta Samhita, and other public domain sources. The data is also available in English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. Each patent office would consult this repository of traditional Indian medical knowledge in order to verify patent applications prior to granting patents. It proved effective, as many medical patent applications based on Indian knowledge submitted to U.S. and European patent offices were either amended or rejected.

LEGAL FRAMEWORK: WHERE DOES INDIA STAND?

India’s domestic legal framework also reflects its commitment to preventing biopiracy. The Biological Diversity Act, 2002, enacted to implement the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), requires prior approval from the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) before any biological resource or associated knowledge can be used for commercial or research purposes by foreign entities. The Patents Act, 1970, as amended in 2002 and 2005, explicitly requires patent applicants to disclose the source and geographical origin of any biological material used in an invention, and grants the government power to oppose patents obtained through misappropriation.

Despite these measures, significant challenges remain. The TKDL’s access agreements with foreign patent offices are non-binding in nature, and not all countries have adopted comparable disclosure requirements. Oral traditions and knowledge held by tribal communities — often the most vulnerable to exploitation — remain difficult to document and legally protect. Furthermore, even when patents are revoked, communities that developed the knowledge rarely receive compensation for years of unauthorised commercial use.

CONCLUSION

Biopiracy is an issue not only of law, but also of equity, nationality and morality, within the international regime of intellectual property rights. From turmeric to neem to Basmati-there are numerous examples proving how the international regime of IPRs has turned to be a profit oriented regime devoid of any knowledge base, to provide an incentive for innovation. The fact that India decided to act against this menace by creating a Traditional Knowledge Digital Library(TKDL), the Biological Diversity Act and pushing for these rights in international platforms proves that owner of traditional knowledge cannot remain mute spectators and watch their knowledge being looted for private gains by other. 

It is only when an international system of regulation would be established in place, with the inclusion of a mandatory disclosure rule, for all the patent applicants to disclose the origin of any traditional knowledge employed in patent applications; and also make the sharing of benefit not a moral, but mandatory duty; that biopiracy would be overcome. Unless patent system recognize that not all knowledge originates in laboratories; the Indian traditional knowledge would keep being looted for private profit with utter disregard for indigenous rights.

REFERENCES

Shubham Yadav & Suryansh Tiwari, “Traditional Knowledge and Patent Issues with Respect to Basmati, Neem, Turmeric and Golden Rice”, White Black Legal International Law Journal, Vol. 2, Issue 10 (2025), available at: https://www.whiteblacklegal.co.in/details/traditional-knowledge-and-patent-issues-with-respect-to-basmati-neem-turmeric-and-golden-rice-by—shubham-yadav-suryansh-tiwari

“Traditional Knowledge and Patent Issues: An Overview of Turmeric, Basmati, Neem Cases”,Mondaq India (2018), available at: https://www.mondaq.com/india/patent/586384/traditional-knowledge-and-patent-issues-an-overview-of-turmeric-basmati-neem-cases?msg=15

PubMed Central, National Library of Medicine, available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3827099/#s2

“EPO Accepts Biopiracy Argument and Revokes Patent”, CORDIS — European Commission, available at: https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/23505-epo-accepts-biopiracy-argument-and-revokes-patent

“Case Study on Neem, Turmeric and Basmati Rice”, SlideShare, available at: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/case-study-on-neem-turmeric-and-basmati-rice/241131204