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India Hits Back in 'Bio-Piracy' Battle

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the prior-body-art dept.

papvf writes "The BBC News Online has an interesting story about a project to put traditional medical knowledge online. From the article: 'The ambitious $2m project, christened Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, will roll out an encyclopedia of the country's traditional medicine in five languages - English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish - in an effort to stop people from claiming them as their own and patenting them.'"

2 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Piracy Made Easy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Redundant

    If these are traditional medicine, nobody can patent it because of prior art, and whoever claims it will not stand long in the court.

    You haven't had much experience with court cases involving big companies, have you? 5 years later MAYBE it'll get thrown out, if the other side can afford to keep paying that long.

  2. Re:Information is great and all, but by Petersko · · Score: 0, Redundant

    After a while, doesn't making everything free kind of destroy the incentive for all but the most altrustic knowledge-seekers?

    I must have said this a hundred times before, but usually nobody replies.

    Usually I'm taking about why sharing music files IS theft, which naturally changes EVERYTHING for some reason I can't fully understand.