Kerala recently unveiled a rather unconventional ‘traditional knowledge’ policy — set to be one of the few such legislations in the world. Essentially, it seeks to regulate ‘traditional knowledge’ within the state of Kerala — by inter alia providing for some form of ‘property rights’ over this body of knowledge.

All kinds of ‘traditional knowledge’, including that which is exclusive to families/communities, are part of a ‘knowledge commons’ and can be freely used (under a ‘commons license’) for non-commercial purposes by any non-corporate entity. However, family/community-owned knowledge would need to be verified and registered with a state authority. Most interestingly, the policy envisages an open source model, where anything created/invented using such traditional knowledge flows back to the common pool of traditional knowledge.

This move to legislate on traditional knowledge is a very bold, non-traditional move. Oddly enough, India and other developing countries despite having raised the issue globally and expecting the international community to readily accept it, have not so much as worked out a domestic regime in this regard. One must remember that TRIPS, a legislation mandating uniform IP standards, was shoved down the throat of many unsuspecting developing countries only after its developed country proponents had carefully crafted their own domestic regimes.

Given that the Centre has failed to come up with any traditional knowledge policy/legislation for many years now, Kerala may have decided to take matters into its own hands. However, given constitutional law bottlenecks (the Center seems to have exclusive domain to legislate in this area), the state ought to be very careful in how it goes about drafting this legislation. Illustratively, if the thrust is on ‘trade’ of traditional knowledge products, it could well claim exclusive competence under entry 26 of the state list.

... contd.