Published: 11:22 PM, 30 September 2026
Can Bangladesh Adopt India’s Traditional Knowledge Digital Library Model?
Rozina Akter Nishu
In a village pharmacy in rural Bangladesh, a Kabiraj mixes a paste of medicinal plants to treat fever, using a remedy passed down orally through generations. Yet if a foreign laboratory isolates a compound from those same plants and files a patent application abroad, Bangladesh may struggle to demonstrate that the underlying knowledge already existed. This vulnerability is precisely what India set out to address more than two decades ago with its Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL). As Bangladesh holds a similarly rich body of Ayurvedic, Unani, folk and indigenous knowledge, an important legal and economic question arises: could Bangladesh adapt the TKDL model, and if so, how?
In international policy discussions, traditional knowledge protection is often understood through two broad approaches: defensive and positive protection. Defensive protection does not create new proprietary rights. Instead, it seeks to prevent third parties from obtaining inappropriate intellectual property rights by making existing traditional knowledge available as prior art to patent examiners. Positive protection, by contrast, seeks to give communities legal control over the use of their knowledge, including through consent, licensing, attribution and benefit-sharing mechanisms.
India's TKDL primarily operates as a defensive protection mechanism. That distinction is crucial because Bangladesh can learn from the database's approach to documentation without assuming that documentation alone can provide communities with ownership, control or economic benefits. Launched in 2001 through collaboration between India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Ministry of AYUSH, the TKDL was created to convert traditional knowledge contained in classical texts into a form that patent examiners can search and understand. The database contains traditional knowledge relating to Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha, Sowa Rigpa and Yoga. Material originally recorded in languages including Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Tamil is translated into five international languages used in patent examination: English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish. To connect traditional knowledge with modern patent classification, the information is organized using the Traditional Knowledge Resource Classification (TKRC). The system was developed to structure traditional medical knowledge in a format compatible with international patent classification systems and has contributed to changes concerning the classification of medicinal plants.
Access to the full database is confidential rather than open to the public. Patent offices receive access under non-disclosure agreements so that examiners can search the database while protecting the underlying information. The Indian government reported access for 14 patent offices in 2022, while CSIR's current information reports that 18 patent offices have access following subsequent agreements, including the agreement with Australia's IP office in July 2026. The model therefore creates a bridge between traditional knowledge and the patent system: knowledge preserved in historical sources is translated, classified and made searchable in a form that patent examiners can use when assessing whether an invention is genuinely new.
India's experience demonstrates the potential value of systematic documentation. Two famous patent disputes illustrate the problem that existed even before the TKDL. In 1995, a US patent concerning the use of turmeric for wound healing was successfully challenged after evidence of earlier traditional knowledge was presented. Similarly, a European patent concerning the fungicidal properties of neem was challenged on the basis of evidence showing that the relevant knowledge was already known. These disputes predated the TKDL. They nevertheless demonstrated the broader problem that India later attempted to address through systematic documentation: traditional knowledge may exist for generations but remain difficult for an international patent examiner to locate and evaluate. The TKDL subsequently operated on a much larger scale. An Indian government statement in March 2022 reported 418,885 formulations in the database and stated that 265 patent applications had been withdrawn, amended, rejected or otherwise set aside on the basis of TKDL evidence. Earlier CSIR data reported 219 cases during the 2012–2017 period.
These figures should be understood as government-reported figures rather than independently audited measurements. Nevertheless, they indicate the scale of India's documentation effort and the practical role that such evidence can play in patent examination. The TKDL model is not without criticism. First, there is a dual-use risk. Once a traditional formulation is documented, the information can potentially help researchers identify existing knowledge and develop modified or derivative products. Documentation may therefore prevent someone from obtaining a patent over the traditional knowledge itself while not necessarily preventing a patent over a genuinely new invention derived from it. Second, there is a community participation problem. Because the TKDL is administered through state institutions rather than being controlled directly by the communities whose knowledge is documented, the database itself does not automatically provide a mechanism for prior consent, attribution or benefit-sharing. This distinction is important for Bangladesh. Preventing an inappropriate patent is one objective. Ensuring that communities retain a meaningful role in decisions concerning their knowledge is another.
Bangladesh possesses a substantial body of traditional knowledge, ranging from medicinal practices used by folk Kabirajes to the intricate techniques and motifs associated with Jamdani and other traditional crafts. Traditional knowledge is also maintained by numerous ethnic and indigenous communities. In 2016, Jamdani became Bangladesh's first registered Geographical Indication. Bangladesh already has several laws that address parts of this broader problem.
The Patents Act 2022 modernized Bangladesh's patent framework and replaced the patent provisions of the Patents and Designs Act 1911. However, the existence of traditional knowledge in an oral or undocumented form creates a practical evidentiary problem: knowledge that cannot readily be located or verified as prior art may be difficult to bring to the attention of a patent examiner. This does not mean that oral traditional knowledge has no legal relevance. Rather, it highlights the importance of creating reliable documentary records that can be searched and verified during patent examination.
The Bangladesh Biological Diversity Act 2017 addresses access to biological resources and associated traditional knowledge, as well as fair and equitable benefit-sharing. The Act requires prior approval of the National Committee in specified circumstances involving the collection or acquisition of biological resources or associated traditional knowledge, particularly by non-residents and certain organizations. The Act also contains provisions aimed at ensuring fair benefit-sharing and recognizing and conserving local communities' traditional knowledge. Researchers have nevertheless identified limitations in its practical implementation. This makes the Act particularly relevant to any future digital documentation project. A database should not merely record knowledge. It should operate alongside the country's existing consent and benefit-sharing framework.
The Copyright Act 2023 provides another form of protection for folklore and traditional cultural expressions and addresses commercial use of such material. This is closer to positive protection because it concerns the interests of communities in the use of their cultural knowledge and expressions. But it serves a different function from a patent-focused prior-art database. Copyright protection does not, by itself, create the kind of searchable technical record that patent examiners need when assessing the novelty of an invention. The three areas therefore perform different functions: patent law concerns novelty and patentability, biodiversity law addresses biological resources and associated traditional knowledge, and copyright law can address aspects of traditional cultural expression. Bangladesh should not attempt to reproduce India's TKDL wholesale. India's model benefited from a large body of documented classical texts and the institutional capacity of CSIR and other specialized bodies. Bangladesh faces a different documentation challenge because much of its traditional knowledge is oral, locally held and expressed through different languages and community practices. Even Jamdani weaving knowledge has historically been transmitted through oral forms such as sloka or buli, rather than through systematic written documentation. The financial dimension also matters. India's TKDL required substantial long-term investment. A Rajya Sabha reply reported expenditure of approximately INR 2,742 crore on TKDL-related activities between 2017 and 2022. Bangladesh therefore needs a model proportionate to its own institutional and financial capacity.
A phased approach would be more realistic. First, begin with targeted documentation. Bangladesh could initially focus on traditional knowledge that is already recorded in books, manuscripts, academic research and other reliable sources, particularly Ayurvedic and Unani knowledge. Once the system is established, it could gradually expand to community-held oral knowledge. Second, combine defensive documentation with community safeguards. Any national database should operate alongside consent, recognition and benefit-sharing mechanisms rather than treating documentation as an end in itself. Communities should have a meaningful role in deciding what knowledge may be documented, how sensitive information is handled and who may access it. Third, build institutional capacity. The Department of Patents, Designs and Trademarks could work with universities, research institutions and relevant cultural organizations to develop classification and search mechanisms. Patent examiners would also need training so that the database becomes a practical examination tool rather than merely a digital archive. Fourth, protect sensitive community knowledge. Not every piece of traditional knowledge should necessarily be placed in an unrestricted public database. Bangladesh could consider controlled access mechanisms for information that communities regard as sensitive or confidential, while still providing patent examiners with sufficient evidence to assess prior art.
India's TKDL demonstrates that systematic documentation can turn traditional knowledge into usable prior-art evidence within the patent system. Its experience also shows that documentation alone cannot resolve every question surrounding ownership, consent and benefit-sharing. For Bangladesh, the challenge is therefore not simply to build an Indian-style database. It is to build a system suited to Bangladesh's own legal institutions, communities, languages and forms of traditional knowledge. For patent examination purposes, traditional knowledge that cannot be located or verified as prior art may be extremely difficult to use against a claim of novelty, even when that knowledge has existed within a community for generations. A carefully designed national database could help close that gap. But it should be built together with community participation, consent and benefit-sharing mechanisms already recognized in Bangladesh's legal framework. The real lesson from India is therefore not to copy the TKDL. It makes traditional knowledge legally visible without taking it away from the communities that preserved it.
That is where Bangladesh's opportunity lies: not merely in digitizing its past, but in building a legal and institutional system capable of protecting that knowledge in the future.
Rozina Akter Nishu studies Law
in Bangladesh University of
Professionals (BUP), Mirpur Cantonment, Dhaka. Views expressed in the article
are the author's personal opinions.
