Open Forum

New Delhi, 26 December 2008

Race For Patents

WEST CLAIMS YOGA TOO 

By Dr. P. K. Vasudeva

Of late our traditional knowledge has been a subject of curiosity and there is anxiety over its acquisition by the West.  However, we continue to be casual about our age-old rich cultural heritage and the wisdom of our ancestors. At best, it is preserved in museums and some libraries in the form of manuscripts. Our ancestors believed in the welfare of the entire world community, therefore, no concept like patent or exclusive usage of any art or science existed in ancient India.

True to our tradition, we innocently used to gift handwritten books to foreigners so they could appreciate and show compassion towards us. One such case is of Cherio, who was one of the most famous and colourful occult figures of the early 20^th Century. He was a clairvoyant who used palmistry, astrology, and Chaldean numerology, to make startlingly accurate predictions, including world events. He came to India to study Palmistry and then wrote world-renowned books on the subject. However, the situation is just opposite in today’s business environment which is clearly commercial than ethical.

After India’s compliance to Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement of the World Trade Organisation (WTO),  surprisingly, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued 134 patents on yoga accessories, 150 yoga-related copyrights and 2,315 yoga trademarks. In addition, Britain has approved at least 10 trademarks relating to yoga training aids that are mentioned in ancient Indian texts.

The worst "culprits" are Indians based in America, where yoga has become a $30 billion-a-year business -- a growth fuelled by celebrity adherents such as Madonna. According to one report, attempts have even been made in America to patent the syllable "OM," the sacred sound with which we start all our prayers.

It is an undisputed fact that Yoga is the gift of India to the world. The Asana is an integral part of "Astang Yoga" that was developed by Maharishi Patanjali and it was codified in his Yog Darshan 5,000 years ago. However, some self-styled yoga gurus in the West are claiming their rights over certain sequence of asanas. The big question is whether Yoga is patentable or not? The criteria for patentability of an invention provide that it should have novelty, non-obviousness and a utility in industrial application.

Novelty invention is one, which has not been disclosed in the prior art. The term ‘prior art’ means everything that has been published, presented or otherwise disclosed to the public on the date of filing an application for patent.  Such information should not be available anywhere in the public domain (either written or in any other form, or in any language) before the date on which the application is first filed i.e. the 'priority date'.

Bikram Choudhury, a US-based Indian, claims that the 26 postures he has strung together in a sequence, and which his followers perform, twice per session, in a room heated to 105F, is his intellectual property. Further, he says that these poses cannot be taught either in the same sequence or any derivative thereof, without the teacher having graduated from his personal training programme. The fee for this programme is $5,000 per person.

Choudhury opened his first yoga school in 1973, in San Francisco, and now claims over 900 schools worldwide. In the US, where the popularity of yoga is underlined by an estimated 19 million practitioners and annual revenue to the tune of $30 billion, his Bikram Yoga School is a front-runner. He has celebrity clients ranging from pop diva Madonna to tennis superstar Serena Williams.

An organisation OSYU (Open Source Yoga Unity) challenged this in court and contended that yoga is a 5,000-year-old tradition, and there cannot be copyright by anyone. The question before the court for adjudication was whether Choudhury is entitled to copyright and trademark the 26 poses, all of which are taken from the 84 poses that make up classic Indian yoga.

On 3rd May, 2005 Choudhury and “OSYU" announced they have settled the litigation, which involved the latter’s claim that Bikram's copyright and trademark relating to "Bikram Yoga" are invalid, and that he had engaged in copyright misuse by sending out cease and desist letters. The parties arrived at a mutually satisfactory resolution of their differences, and the lawsuit was dismissed. Now both are working together to bring the benefits of yoga to the world!

In the meantime, India is planning to register its data base of traditional knowledge digital library of ayurveda, siddha, yoga and unani systems of medicine with major patent offices worldwide so that piracy of Indian traditional knowledge is forbidden. Separate databases for these systems of medicine are being developed, as standardisation is the need of the hour.  Unani medicine offers great potential for providing care of the elderly due to its holistic approach and although it originated in Greece, India today is considered as the world leader in this system of medicine

The Government has also woken up the reality and has recently established a task force on ‘traditional knowledge and intellectual property theft’ under the chairmanship of Dr Vinod Gupta., leading the traditional wealth encyclopaedia project and heads India's National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR). Dr Gupta reckons that of the nearly 5,000 patents given out by the US Patent Office on various medical plants by 2000, some 80 per cent were plants of Indian origin. In an effort to protect India's heritage, the task force has begun documenting 1,500 yoga postures drawn from classical yoga texts -- including the writings of sage Patanjali. The data is being stored in a digital library, wherein computerized contents will soon be made available to patent offices worldwide.

The information on yoga has been in public domain in India for thousands of years and therefore it is not patentable in our country. Therefore, some yoga practitioners in the West, including persons of Indian origin claimed exclusive rights over it. The time has come now to recognize and protect our traditional knowledge. In fact, world renowned Swami Ramdev, who practices at the Patanjali University, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, should get all the yogic asanas patented by digitising these. This could ensure that the world does not misuse these by patenting our traditional knowledge.  

Recall, how foreigners have shamelessly patented hundred of books, cassettes and meditation techniques of Osho, forcing the ‘Osho World’ in India to fight a legal battle for its cancellation on grounds that it is an Indian traditional knowledge domain of Osho’.

Clearly, it is time to make people aware of the impact of present day intellectual property regime on our traditional knowledge. Most of us are ignorant about the intellectual property laws prevailing in India and abroad. Though we have made necessary changes in our Patent Act of 1970 and enacted new legislation to make it TRIPS compatible, yet traditional knowledge has been left out.

Importantly, it requires collective efforts from all of us so that no individual or organisation could claim exclusive right in respect of our traditional knowledge to the detriment of public at large.—INFA

 (Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)