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Govt's building database of 1500 postures to prevent patenting by US
India's more than 4,000-year-old yoga tradition may witness some high-octane trade disputes sometime from now. The Union government is building its muscles to bust the market monopolies on yoga that Western practitioners have been securing through copyrights, trademarks and patents. Yoga is a flourishing $27bn-a-year business in the US.
To start with, the government is making a digital database of 1,500 yoga postures and their therapeutic properties that can be used to overthrow the 134 patents on yoga accessories, 150 yoga-related copyrights and 2,315 yoga trademarks the US Patent Office has granted so far, sources said.
This database, comprising body cleansing practices, breathing exercises, yoga symbols called mudras, postures and special practices such as floating in water, will be digitally documented in five major international languages so that it can be shared with prominent patent offices around the world.
This is to prevent the grant of trademarks, copyrights and patents on yoga in the future. The database would also help avoid costly litigation to reverse the rights already granted. To reverse them, India has to move the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).
The National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCIR), under the science and technology ministry is developing this nearly one-crore page digital database for the Department of Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Sidha and Homoeopathy (Ayush) under the health ministry. The database will also cover ayurveda, sidha and unani medicines.
Many of these rights have been secured by non-resident Indians like Bikram Chowdhury, who used a copyright on his book in which he described his sequence of yoga postures to prevent others from teaching them, although the postures themselves were not under any form of protection.
He got protection for a sequence of 26 postures called 'asanas' to be performed at a particular atmospheric temperature. While the postures are straight out of India's tradition, the temperature requirement, the ambience and accessories such as the mat spread on the floor are his own, as justifications for the protection, an official source said.
The government now fears that someone
may get market monopoly for the Buddhist way of meditation called 'vipassana'
and transcendental meditation taught by UP-based Maharshi Vedic University.
There is another problem the government is facing now, with no easy solution
in sight. "There are instances where people have been registering yoga-related
domain names only for selling them later at a huge profit," the official
said.
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