India to Make Some Traditional Knowledge Free Access

So far, access to the TKDL has been restricted to agreed users — mainly patent offices worldwide — for fear of it being misused for commercial purposes, according to V. K. Gupta, the library's director.
Now, there are plans to release a small part of the information, which focuses on diseases of the poor, into the public domain, said Samir Brahmachari, director-general of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), where the project is hosted.

"A proposal is lying with us to put the one per cent of the TKDL meant for diseases like cholera, malaria and tuberculosis (TB) into the public domain," he said at an international conference held in New Delhi last week (22–24 March), which examined how India's example in protecting traditional knowledge could be used around the world.