Patent Laws – An Attempt To Protect Traditional Knowledge

Ashutosh Yadav, BML Munjal University

Introduction

A world without patent laws would be a world with no innovation, and a world with no innovation will never progress. Imagine the idea of putting all of one’s effort and mind into a project, be it in any field and after a breakthrough, he doesn’t get the due recognition which he deserves, and others even start profiting on his effort and time that it took to achieve that breakthrough. How would that person ever be motivated to innovate something ever again and why would others as well, as they just have to wait for someone else to do that for them. This mind set would lead to less and less innovation and would destroy any incentive to develop something new. To protect this development of idea, we have intellectual property rights. Which basically recognises the intellectual innovate subject matter as property and the person who innovated as the owner of that property. To protect your intellectual property, one must get it patented so that no one else can use that idea without the permission of the original owner. The patent laws are however very monopolistic in nature and big corporation looks for a chance to claim patent legality over various projects so that they have the sole monopoly in that market, with this in mind in cultures like that of India where most of our traditions and practices have been passed down from generation to generation mostly orally and some textually how can we look to protect ourselves from such patent laws of big corporation and establish our rights over practices which are part of our traditional knowledge? To answer this question, we must first understand the meaning and significance of traditional knowledge and then move on the need for preservation of our traditional knowledge.