The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : IPRs policy tabled in Assembly

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Tuesday, Jul 15, 2008
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Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

IPRs policy tabled in Assembly

Special Correspondent

Thiruvananthapuram: Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Vijayakumar, on Monday, tabled in the Assembly the State government’s Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) Policy 2008, focussing on the protection of traditional knowledge and biodiversity.

Mr. Vijayakumar said that unless a strong IPR law was enacted, the State’s traditional knowledge could not be protected from being misused. The Kerala IPR Act, proposed in the policy, would seek to ensure that the rightful owners of traditional knowledge would get the benefit rather than the multinational companies that got patent by making minor changes to traditional knowledge and reaped rich profits.

Later, at a press conference, the Minister said that the policy categorised traditional knowledge into two — that transmitted down generations by communities, families or traditional bodies and that being used daily by Ayurveda physicians, doctors, and others.

The policy envisaged the setting up of knowledge commons, a repository of traditional knowledge which would not be in the public domain.

Common licence would be issued to the owners of traditional knowledge with which they could use the knowledge on a commercial basis.

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