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IPR Issues Relating to Agri sector
The turmeric case
The turmeric patent is a landmark case in the are of Intellectual property rights. This was the first time a patent based on the Traditional Knowledge of a developing country was challenged successfully and Unites State Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) revoked the patent.
In 1995, to two non-resident Indians, Suman K. Das and Hari Har P. Cohly, associated with the University of Mississippi Medical Centre, Jackson, USA obtained patent for Use of turmeric in wound healing. As turmeric has been used by all Indian families as a traditional wound healer in India for thousands of years for healing wounds and rashes.
Indian Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) were entrusted with the responsibility if challenging the patent. CSIR challenged the patent on the ground that it lacked novelty. CSIR could locate 32 references (some of them being more than one hundred years old, in Sanskrit, Urdu and Hindi), which showed that this finding was well known in India prior to filing of this patent. The formal request for re-examination of the patent was filled by CSIR at USPTO on 28 October 1996.
The first re-examination result rejected all the six claims based on the references submitted by CSIR on the ground of 'anticipated references'
University of Mississippi Medical Centre, decided not to pursue the case and transferred the rights to the inventors. Inventors Mr. Suman K. Das and Mr. Hari Har P. Cohly decided to file a Objections to the re- examination results. The inventors argued that the powder and paste form of Turmeric had different physical properties which helps wound healing, i.e. bio-availability and absorbability, and therefore, one of the ordinary skills in the art would not expect, with any reasonable degree of certainty, that a powdered material would be useful in the same application as a paste of the same material. The inventors, further, mentioned that oral administration was available only with honey and honey itself was considered to have wound healing properties.
In the second re-examination it was observed that the paste and the powder forms were equivalent for healing wounds in view of the cited material by CSIR. the examiner rejected all the claims once again and up held the contentions raised by CSIR
Turmeric patent case is the fist successful case in the area of intellectual property violation
Details of the patent application is available at USPTO
Last updated on: 22-12-2007
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