Traditional Knowledge Digital Library
[1] Set up in 2001, as a collaboration between the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and then-Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (India) the objective of the library is to protect the ancient and traditional knowledge of the country from exploitation through biopiracy and unethical patents, by documenting it electronically and classifying it as per international patent classification systems.[3][4][5] As of 2010, it had transcribed 148 books on Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Yoga in public domain[citation needed], into 34 million pages of information, translated into five languages — English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese.India’s vast traditional medicine knowledge existed in languages like Sanskrit, Hindi, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Tamil, making it inaccessible for examiners at international patent offices to verify claims.This experience prompted the Department of AYUSH, government of India to create a task force of experts in the areas of traditional medicine systems of India (i.e., Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Yoga), patent examiners, IT experts, scientists and technical officers, for the creation Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL).The tasks included, for example, transcribing Sanskrit shlokas which describe an Ayurvedic formulation in text, using Traditional Knowledge Resource Classification (TKRC) devised for the purpose, so that it is easily understandable to any patent examiner, anywhere in the world.