Traditional Knowledge Digital Library

Traditional Knowledge Digital Library is an Indian digital knowledge repository of the traditional knowledge, especially about medicinal plants and formulations used in Indian systems of medicine. Set up in 2001, as a collaboration between the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Department of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (Dept. of AYUSH), Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India, the objective of the library is to protect the ancient and traditional knowledge of the country from exploitation through bio-piracy and unethical patents, by documenting it electronically and classifying it as per international patent classification systems. Apart from that, the non-patent database also serves to foster modern research based on traditional knowledge, as its simplifies access to this vast knowledge, be it of traditional remedies, or practices.

As of 2010, it had transcribed 148 books on Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Yoga in public domain, into 34 million pages of information, translated into five languages — English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese. Data on 80,000 formulations in Ayurveda, 1,000,000 in Unani and 12,000 in Siddha had already been put in the TKDL. Plus it has also signed agreements with leading international patent offices such as European Patent Office (EPO), United Kingdom Trademark & Patent Office (UKPTO) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office to protect traditional knowledge from biopiracy, by giving patent examiners at International Patent Offices access to the TKDL database for patent search and examinations purposes.