Clean Tech and the Science of Life

Significant aspects of clean tech are directly related to the life sciences. For example, many of the patentECO Industry Index patents issued by the USPTO Green Tech Pilot Program related to bioengineering and incorporated technologies such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs), fermentation (the use of yeast to convert sugars to alcohol), or non-GMO organisms. Although most of the citations in these patents are relatively recent, it is interesting to consider a life sciences repository that covers life sciences discoveries over thousands of years – the Science of Life – and how this body of information relates to clean tech innovations now being patented. This repository is the Indian art and science of Ayurveda. Ayur and Veda literally mean Science of Life.

The Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR)’s Department of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy, part of the Indian Government, is compiling a massive database of of traditional medicines and ancient remedies that it wants to protect from being patented in other countries. The goal is to protect the collective traditional knowledge of India by making it available to patent examiners around the world in a way that is accessible and usable.

The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) contains information on Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha, and Yoga. It contains over 1200 formulations including 500 representative Ayurveda formulations, 500 Unani formulations and 200 Siddha formulations, all linked to the International Patent Classification system (IPC). It includes easy to understand information on how the compounds are formulated, what the treatment is useful for and the dosage information. It also contains a list of prior art documents and publication dates.

Information in the TKDL has been successfully used as prior art to force the withdrawal of patent applications using traditional formulations. The formulations sections contain the Title of the Traditional Knowledge Resource and “Knowledge Since” information which has entries with listings citing 1000 years. Now that’s some prior art.  (Here is a list of some of the patent applications challenged using the information in the TKDL.)

For those of you who are classification junkies the TKDL has identified approximately 200 subgroups on medicinal plants where they recommend the TKDL be linked to aid patent examiners in looking for prior art that relates to India’s traditional knowledge. The list is available here.

Among their more recent achievements is documenting over 900 yoga poses to block entrepreneurs from obtaining yoga-related patents. Yoga has been around for over 6,000 years embodying both a physical and spiritual practice. Yoga has grown into a $250 billion industry internationally.

This is an awesome resource for researchers, representing the intersection of digital life sciences and the digital science of life. Have any of our readers used this resource in the development of their inventions?

Access to Knowledge - A Primer & Thought Leadership

Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property edited by Gaëlle Krikorian and Amy Kapczynski — A discussion of how intellectual property and access to knowledge collide, intersect, and compete.

Access to Knowledge (A2K) is a term used to cover many of the issues that impact the changing world of digital knowledge — copyright, creative commons "copyleft" protection of traditional knowledge, patent rights intellectual property and trade.  A2K has many aspects and many constituencies.  Here the discussion brings into sharp contrast how intellectual property collides with everyday life.  This is the latest selection from the Way Better Patents Intellectual Property Reading List.

Consider some of the goings-on in the IP world.  Publishers of technical journals suing patent attorneys for making unauthorized (read uncompensated for) copies of their copyright protected work to attached to patent applications to document prior art.  College students who found cheap copies of expensive text books during their semester abroad and shipped them home to sell on eBay are now being sued by the publishers because they believe reselling a used book that was printed overseas in the US market violates their copyright.  Medical researchers attempting to patent treatments that use the same compounds documented in century old Sanskrit.

Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property defines the core issues on how the digital world calls for new thinking on the issues and provides insightful thought leadership on the complex legal, regulatory, educational, and human issues.  I was introduced to the A2K folks as "progressive IP advocates."  The progressive moniker made me predisposed to think this was going to be a sermon on why patents are bad and why copyrighted works should be free for the taking.  You will be surprised at the discussion and how the authors have framed the discussion.  The progressive IP advocates have a lot to say.

Technologies of Freedom and A2K

Today we add a book from the Way Better Patents Reading List that is a little harder to find but worth the hunt.  In this 1984 text Ithiel de Sola Pool discusses how emerging digital technologies are the agents of freedom and protectors of free speech and the ability to be exchange information in ways never possible before.  The book was written well before blogs, Twitter, social media, and the ability to share global communications in seconds.  For many civil society A2K folks, this is their foundational document.  It's worth a read.  And, it's available on Kindle.  How new millennium.



Technologies of Freedom by Ithiel de Sola Pool — A seminal look at how digital technology supports individual freedom and vice versa. A primer on many of the issues in the Access to Knowledge (A2K) movement.

Please send us your favorite IP reads - feedback@waybetterpatents.com.

(We added the link to buy the books at Amazon for two reasons - the pictures of the covers look good and if you buy one of the books from the link on, Amazon pays us a little change.  This helps us keep our product cost low. )