NEW DELHI // For centuries, Indian housewives have used homemade remedies based on cow's milk to cure constipation, but in 2009 the Swiss food giant Nestle applied for a patent to protect a similar product of its own.
Earlier this year, India successfully fought off Nestle's attempt at the European Patent Office (EPO) to secure a patent, saying that using cow's milk as a laxative was mentioned in ancient texts and was therefore not new.
Indian government officials are fighting hundreds of other cases to try to protect the country's "genetic heritage", a topic high on the agenda at the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity currently meeting in Hyderabad.
"India is one of the mega centres for biodiversity in the world," said Vinod Bhatt, the director of research at Navdanya, a non-profit body that seeks to promote indigenous knowledge.
"We cannot allow theft of our traditional knowledge that dates back thousands of years and is rooted in our culture. We have to protect ourselves from commercial exploitation by the western world."
Traditional knowledge, used for centuries by indigenous communities under local laws and customs, plays an important role in areas such as food security, biodiversity, agriculture and medicine.
"Nestle is just one case. We have already succeeded in 110, and 800 more are in the pipeline," said he head of India's Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), Vinod Kumar Gupta.
The library is a database established in 2001 that has recorded more than 250,000 traditional formulations, including the ayurvedic system of medicine that has become hugely popular in the West.
"Every known medicinal plant in India is under piracy attack," said Mr Gupta, citing an example where a US patent application was made by the Britain-based firm Provexis on the use of banana extracts as treatment for diarrhoea.
Evidence from the TKDL proved the banana preparation was previously well known, and the application was withdrawn.
In the cow's milk case, the European patent authorities also sought advice from the database which confirmed it was a remedy - often mixed with other ingredients - to treat constipation for hundreds of years.
A patent application is normally rejected if there is "prior existing knowledge" about the product, but that is far easier to prove if the information is published in a journal or on a database, rather than only held in folklore.
About 200 researchers took eight years to create the TKDL database, combing through Hindi, Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian and Urdu texts on ayurveda, yoga and other less-known health systems such as unani and siddha.
The TKDL is accessible to foreign patent offices, which can consult it before deciding whether to grant exclusive rights to applicants.
India woke up to the threat of what is now termed "biopiracy" 20 years ago after a European patent was granted to a US group on an anti-fungal product derived from the native Indian neem tree.
Campaigners and Green Party politicians in Europe challenged its validity, and in 2000 India finally won a 10-year legal battle to have the patent revoked as neem seeds had been used for centuries as a medicine, insecticide and contraceptive.
In 2009, the EPO also withdrew another patent granted to a Spanish company for the use of melon extract to treat the skin disease vitiligo on the same legal grounds.
The practical effect of patents may in reality have little effect in India's villages, where plants, trees and other natural products are still widely used to treat maladies.
But the patents provoke an angry response from the government, which sees protecting knowledge of traditional Indian medicine from foreign commercial exploitation as a matter of national pride.
Legal battles between the TKDL and global firms over patent requests can take years to resolve and require exhaustive documentation by the agency's researchers to prove prior art references.
Scientists and lawyers agree that countries such as India must be more vigilant.
"Between 1992 and 2000 China revised its patent laws twice to ensure that it could draw intellectual property control over its unique system of medicine," said agriculture scientist and biodiversity expert, Devinder Sharma.
He said similar legislation must be put in place in India. Lawyers backed Mr Sharma's idea and called for comprehensive laws to provide better protection from the international patents.
"Traditional knowledge falls into the grey area and is not as clearly defined as intellectual property rights in Indian law," said Pratiush Pratik, a New Delhi-based lawyer who specialises in the subject.
Western societies have accepted the loss of traditional knowledge, he said. "India must not make that mistake."
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
The specs
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo
Power: 398hp from 5,250rpm
Torque: 580Nm at 1,900-4,800rpm
Transmission: Eight-speed auto
Fuel economy, combined: 6.5L/100km
On sale: December
Price: From Dh330,000 (estimate)
Results
2.15pm: Maiden (PA) Dh40,000 1,700m; Winner: AF Arrab, Antonio Fresu (jockey), Ernst Oertel (trainer).
2.45pm: Maiden (PA) Dh40,000 1,700m; Winner: AF Mahaleel, Antonio Fresu, Ernst Oertel.
3.15pm: Sheikh Ahmed bin Rashid Al Maktoum handicap (TB) Dh200,000 2,000m; Winner: Dolmen, Richard Mullen, Satish Seemar.
3.45pm: Handicap (PA) Dh40,000 1,200m; Winner: Amang Alawda, Sandro Paiva, Bakhit Al Ketbi.
4.15pm: The Crown Prince of Sharjah Cup Prestige (PA) Dh200,000 1,200m; Winner: AF Alwajel, Tadhg O’Shea, Ernst Oertel.
4.45pm: Handicap (PA) Dh40,000 2,000m; Winner: Al Jazi, Jesus Rosales, Eric Lemartinel.
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
2025 Fifa Club World Cup groups
Group A: Palmeiras, Porto, Al Ahly, Inter Miami.
Group B: Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, Seattle.
Group C: Bayern Munich, Auckland City, Boca Juniors, Benfica.
Group D: Flamengo, ES Tunis, Chelsea, (Leon banned).
Group E: River Plate, Urawa, Monterrey, Inter Milan.
Group F: Fluminense, Borussia Dortmund, Ulsan, Mamelodi Sundowns.
Group G: Manchester City, Wydad, Al Ain, Juventus.
Group H: Real Madrid, Al Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg.
How to apply for a drone permit
- Individuals must register on UAE Drone app or website using their UAE Pass
- Add all their personal details, including name, nationality, passport number, Emiratis ID, email and phone number
- Upload the training certificate from a centre accredited by the GCAA
- Submit their request
What are the regulations?
- Fly it within visual line of sight
- Never over populated areas
- Ensure maximum flying height of 400 feet (122 metres) above ground level is not crossed
- Users must avoid flying over restricted areas listed on the UAE Drone app
- Only fly the drone during the day, and never at night
- Should have a live feed of the drone flight
- Drones must weigh 5 kg or less
ELECTION%20RESULTS
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U19 WORLD CUP, WEST INDIES
UAE group fixtures (all in St Kitts)
- Saturday 15 January: UAE beat Canada by 49 runs
- Thursday 20 January: v England
- Saturday 22 January: v Bangladesh
UAE squad:
Alishan Sharafu (captain), Shival Bawa, Jash Giyanani, Sailles
Jaishankar, Nilansh Keswani, Aayan Khan, Punya Mehra, Ali Naseer, Ronak Panoly,
Dhruv Parashar, Vinayak Raghavan, Soorya Sathish, Aryansh Sharma, Adithya
Shetty, Kai Smith
Naga
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Ms Yang's top tips for parents new to the UAE
- Join parent networks
- Look beyond school fees
- Keep an open mind
