Sunday, December 11 2005 11:22 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: After years of helplessly watching Westerners plagiarize its traditional knowledge, from yoga poses to ayurvedic medicine, India has decided to put an end to generous free lunches people have been helping themselves to.

The Government is in the process of translating millions of ancient transcripts on traditional knowledge areas to create an exhaustive database in English and other foreign languages, hoping that patent offices abroad would refer to them before granting applicants the right to use what is not theirs.

The database, christened Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, would have 30 million pages and a third of it has already been compiled, according to Commerce Ministry's Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion Secretary Ajay Dua.

The effort to create the database began after instances of patenting of yogas poses by Westerners, including an Indian-born yoga guru in the US, came to light.

"Even as this exercise (TKDL) is going on, 150 yoga asanas (poses) have been patented abroad, 134 of these asanas were granted patent by the US Patent and Trademark Office," Dua said.

While knowledge about yoga has been in public domain in India in various vernacular languages, the same was not available to patent examiners abroad, which is why outsiders have been granted patents on something that has been around in India for thousands of years.

This is precisely why researchers are translating ancient Sanskrit and some Persian texts into English and other popular languages like French, German and Japanese.

While patents already granted cannot be reversed, officials hope that the TKDL would repel future attempts by outsiders to lay a claim to India's ancient knowledge.

Indian researchers have already catalogued over 1,500 known yoga poses.

New Delhi's action assumes significance as there is huge money involved in yoga, which according to some estimates, is a three billion dollar industry in the US alone.

In fact, multinational sportswear major Nike has a range of yoga products like duffle bag, yoga pant, yoga mat and yoga shoes.

"This database will put a full stop to attempts by people who do not mind copying to make some money. In fact, a lot of money," said a Commerce Ministry official.

Sources in the National Institute for Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR), which is putting the document together, said TKDL would save the Government precious money, which would otherwise be lost in litigation costs trying to safeguard what rightfully belongs to the country.

"Our entire scheme of patenting has to look at knowledge ever since human beings started treading the earth," Dua said.