| Dr. Jai Maharaj 2005-09-24, 2:26 pm |
| Enforcing Intellectual property rights for ancient Indian inventions
Enforcing Intellectual property rights for ancient Indian
inventions; India in a twist as West 'steals' yog
positions Foreigners claim patents on ancient techniques
[ From: Ravi Chaudhary <ravichaudhary2000@yahoo.com>
[ Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005
If intellectual property rights can be enforced for
Microsoft products, or patents issued for medicine
"discovered' by Western Drug companies, should India not
create patents and enforce them for Indian products and
inventions?
We could start with yog, medicine,
The zero?
Food for thought see;
http://www.canada.com/national/nati...ca-d21e8e652aab
India in a twist as West 'steals' yog positions
Foreigners claim patents on ancient techniques
David Orr
The Sunday Telegraph
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
CREDIT: David Mcnew, Getty Images
''Yog piracy is becoming very common and we are moving to
do something about it,'' says the head of an Indian
government task force.
DELHI - It is meant to engender feelings of peace and
well-being, but yog has become a battleground as India
tries to stop its ancient heritage from being exploited
by the West.
The Indian government is furious that yog practices
dating back thousands of years are being ''stolen'' by
gurus and fitness instructors in Europe and the United
States.
Foreign practitioners are already said to have claimed
hundreds of patents and copyrights on poses and
techniques lifted straight from classical Indian yog
treatises.
''Yog piracy is becoming very common and we are moving to
do something about it,'' says Vinod Gupta, the head of a
recently established Indian government task force on
traditional knowledge and intellectual property theft.
''We know of at least 150 asanas [yog positions] that
have been pirated in the U.S., the U.K., Germany and
Japan. These were developed in India long ago and no one
can claim them as their own.''
In an effort to protect India's heritage, the task force
has begun documenting 1,500 yog postures drawn from
classical yog texts -- including the writings of the
Indian sage Patanjali, the first man to codify the art of
yog. The data are being stored in a digital library whose
computerized contents will soon be made available to
patents offices worldwide.
The worst culprits are Indians based in the United
States, where yog has become a US$30-billion-a-year
business -- a growth fuelled by celebrity adherents such
as Madonna.
Among Western gurus who have prompted the concern,
according to an Indian official, is Bikram Choudhury,
whose ''Bikram'' or ''Vikram'' method is currently one of
the most fashionable styles in the West. A session
involves a series of 26 poses in a room heated to 32C to
38C, enabling pupils to adopt more ''extreme'' positions
than at normal temperatures. A spokesman for Mr.
Choudhury refused to discuss the task force report, but
the guru has previously said rather than claiming
intellectual ownership of the individual postures
themselves, he has copyrighted a sequence of poses, the
dialogue that accompanies them and the environment in
which they are performed during his classes. These, he
claims, are all of his own devising.
The U.S. Patents Office has issued 134 patents on yog
accessories, 150 yog-related copyrights and 2,315 yog
trademarks, says the Indian task force. It also claims
Britain has approved at least 10 trademarks relating to
yog training aids that are mentioned in ancient texts.
According to one report, attempts have even been made in
the United States to patent the syllable ''om,'' the
sacred sound with which Hindus begin their chants.
''No one should be able to claim ownership of these
traditional postures,'' Dr. Gupta said. ''The information
has been in the public domain in India for thousands of
years. But, until now, it has only been available in
languages which people in the outside world cannot
understand.''
The government move is part of a larger project to
document all sources of traditional Indian knowledge. The
database contains details of thousands of herbal
treatments drawn from age-old health systems. So far, 10
million of an estimated 30 million pages of texts in
Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian have been translated and
entered into the digital library.
India was alerted to commercial exploitation of its
national heritage in 1995, when a U.S. company was
granted a patent on the wound-healing properties of
turmeric. Two years later, another company was granted a
patent on basmati rice. India successfully challenged
both patents.
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The terrorist mission of Jesus stated in the Christian bible:
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not so send
peace, but a sword.
"For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in
law.
"And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
- Matthew 10:34-36.
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