India Works to Shield Traditional Knowledge from Modern Patents

RAY SUAREZ:

Now, safeguarding ancient knowledge in a digital library in India. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports from New Delhi.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, NewsHour Correspondent:

The healing art of yoga goes back thousands of years in India. But over the past three decades, it's become a billion-dollar industry in the U.S. Yoga guru Balmukund Singh is proud of the Indian export, but when he hears that some asanas, or postures, have been copy-written by Indians who have moved to the U.S., Singh gets, well, forgive me, tied up in knots.

BALMUKUND SINGH, Yoga Guru (through translator):

This is our cultural heritage. It's ours. How can anybody else patent this? If they invent it, they can patent it. But this is originally an Indian thing. Our sages long ago developed and demonstrated it.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO:

It's not just yoga. In 1997, a Texas company got a patent on basmati rice, which meant that it would get a royalty payment when anyone else sold rice by that name. The Indian government filed 50,000 pages of evidence to show that basmati rice grown in India for centuries was essentially the same stuff. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office finally revoked the basmati patent in 2001.

India's markets are filled with herbs and plants that, over the centuries, have been concocted into remedies for almost every ailment. It's a medicine chest that Dr. V.K. Gupta says is raided all the time by companies and individuals in the West.