New Delhi, April 26: The Indian government has used a set of medieval Indian medicinal texts — the oldest from the 8th century AD — to block 14 patents on plant-based therapies filed in the European Patent Office (EPO).

The EPO has denied two patents to two companies, while 12 other applicants have withdrawn patents over the past year after India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) showed evidence that their claims were known in traditional medicine.

All the claims related to plant-based therapies — grape and apple juice as a tonic for the heart, a cocktail of opium, spinach and fenugreek to improve immunity, and other plant extracts to fight stress, diabetes, obesity, even ageing.

“They had to withdraw patent claims when confronted with evidence that these claims were based entirely on prior knowledge,” said Vinod Gupta, director of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), a repository created by the CSIR and the health ministry. The TKDL encapsulates information from 148 texts of Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha systems of medicine practised in India for centuries.

The TKDL represents India’s effort to prevent biopiracy of traditional knowledge through patent applications outside India. A patent has to involve innovation that is novel and non-obvious.

Over the past year, India has signed agreements with the EPO and patent offices in the US and UK, hoping patent examiners there will make use of the TKDL to avoid issuing patents on claims already present in traditional knowledge.

Earlier this month, a US-company, Jan Marini Skin Research Inc., withdrew its claim on plant extracts from Ashwagandha, Brahmi and turmeric, which it claimed could be used as anti-ageing and anti-inflammatory agents, Gupta said.

An 11th century Unani book called Al-Qanoon Fil Tib had recorded these effects.

Avesthagen, an Indian company, also withdrew its patent application with the EPO on the use of a plant called Arjuna (Terminalia arjuna) as a cardiotonic and for therapy against obesity and diabetes.

A 15th century book of Ayurveda called Vrndamadhava lists these virtues of the Arjuna plant. A 9th century text called Kitaab-al-Hawi that mentions the use of opium, spinach and fenugreek for immunity was used to block an application from the UK.

Gupta estimates that the EPO has about 2,100 pending patent applications dealing with plant-based products. Among these, 221 appear to be based on plants known and used in Indian systems of medicine.

He said the TKDL had objected to 96 applications pending in the EPO. “We’re still trying to determine the number of patents pending in the US patents office which can be challenged through the TKDL,” he said.

Earlier this month, environmental activist Vandana Shiva, director of the non-government Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology, New Delhi, produced a list of more than 4,000 patents involving the use of plants known in traditional medicine granted by the US patents office. The patents have been filed by applications within and outside India.

Shiva said she was forced to compile the list after the CSIR’s TKDL division declined to share with her foundation information on suspect patents on plant-based products that the TKDL had itself compiled.

In the 1990s, the CSIR had successfully challenged a patent granted on the wound healing properties of turmeric in the US patents office, while Shiva had helped overturn a patent on neem after a prolonged legal battle.

The TKDL is expected to speed up the process of challenging patents.