About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


34 L. & Critique 1 (2023)

handle is hein.journals/lwcrtq34 and id is 1 raw text is: Law and Critique (2023) 34:1-19 https://doi.org/1 0.1007/si 0978-021-09299-7 India's Traditional Knowledge Digital Library and the Politics of Patent Classifications Martin Fredriksson' Accepted: 25 May 2021 / Published online: 12 June 2021 @The Author(s) 2021 Abstract This article analyzes India's Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) as a potential intervention in the administration of patent law. The TKDL is a database including a vast body of traditional medical knowledge from India, aiming to pre- vent the patenting and misappropriation of that knowledge. This article contextual- izes the TKDL in relation to documentation theory as well as to existing research on the uses of databases to protect traditional knowledge. It explores the TKDL's potential consequences for India's traditional medical knowledge and the wider implications that traditional knowledge databases can have for the safeguarding of traditional knowledge in general. The article concludes that on the one hand the TKDL bridges the gap between the main branches of Indian traditional medicine and the formal knowledge system of International Patent Classifications. Further- more, it has also inspired revisions of the International Patent Classification system, which makes it better adapted to incorporate traditional medical knowledge. On the other hand, critical research on traditional knowledge documentation argues that tra- ditional knowledge databases, like the TKDL, can decontextualize the knowledge they catalogue and dispossess its original owners. The TKDL, however, also fits into a national, Indian agenda of documenting and modernizing traditional medicine that predates the formation of the TKDL by several decades and challenges the dichot- omy between traditional and scientific knowledge systems that originally motivated the formation of the TKDL. Keywords India - Patent classification - Patent law - Traditional knowledge Traditional knowledge digital library E Martin Fredriksson martin. fredriksson@ liu. se Department of Culture and Society, Linkbping University, Linkoping, Sweden 1 Springer