Introduction
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The diplomatic relations between Brazil and India have achieved new heights with the signing of the agreement between the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI), Brazil, and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Brazil and India have entered into a cooperation arrangement on access to the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), a first-of-its-kind prior-art database of Indian traditional knowledge.
The Agreement was exchanged in the august presence of H.E. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, President of the Federative Republic of Brazil, and Shri Narendra Modi, Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, on 21 February 2026, which will be implemented under the guidance of Mr. Júlio César Moreira, President, INPI, Brazil; Dr N. Kalaiselvi, Director General, CSIR and Secretary, DSIR; and Dr. Viswajanani J. Sattigeri, Scientist-H and Head, CSIR-TKDL Unit, India.
What is TKDL?
The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) is a digital database comprising over 5.2 lakh formulations and practices drawn from Indian systems of medicine such as Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Sowa Rigpa, as well as Yoga, sourced from authoritative traditional texts. This was established in 2001 by the Government of India through a collaboration between CSIR and the Ministry of AYUSH.
Its primary objective is to prevent the erroneous grant of patents on Indian traditional knowledge and to safeguard the country’s knowledge heritage from misappropriation. Regarded as a global benchmark for the defensive protection of traditional knowledge, the impact of TKDL has been significant, as over 375 patent applications worldwide were revoked, rejected, amended, withdrawn, or abandoned based on prior-art evidence sourced in the TKDL.
The February Agreement
The agreement between Brazil and India is premised on the TKDL itself. The agreement grants the INPI access to this digital library, which compiles the massive data of over 5.2 lakh formulations and practices drawn from Indian systems of medicine such as Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Sowa Rigpa, as well as Yoga, sourced from authoritative traditional texts passed down over the generations within the country.
Under the terms of the agreement, INPI would be able to utilise and consult the vast resources of the digital library to assess the novelty of patent claims touching upon traditional medicinal or biological knowledge originating in India. This does not transfer the ownership of the knowledge or the tradition itself; rather, its primary function is procedural, supplying foreign examiners with a documented source of prior art they might otherwise never encounter.
Brazil, being one of the world’s most biodiversity-rich and traditional-knowledge-rich jurisdictions, aligns itself with the view that since traditional knowledge is frequently unpublished in conventional patent or scientific literature, which makes it invisible to the standard prior-art searches, it leads to wrongful patent filings by the countries even when it is centuries old and well established within its country of origin.
It also aligns with Brazil’s own domestic push to strengthen protections against misappropriation of its biodiversity and associated traditional knowledge, making the agreement as much a matter of institutional self-interest for INPI as of goodwill toward India. Further, it mitigates the risk of patents being granted for knowledge that is already known, which carries the reputational as well as the legal costs once such patents are challenged.
India’s Broader Anti-Biopiracy Diplomacy
To understand biopiracy, we examine two pivotal historical patent disputes of patent grants in the international sphere.
First, the neem patent case. In this case, the patent granted (EP0436257) to the multinational company W.R. Grace & Co. and to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) was completely revoked in 2000 by the European Patent Office (EPO) after the massive outcry from Indian NGOs and the scientific community over the “invention” of the fungicide developed from neem extracts, which has been used and is known in India for more than 2,000 years.
Second, the turmeric patent case, where India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) formally challenged the patent granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to the researchers at the University of Mississippi for using turmeric to heal wounds, which is written in ancient Sanskrit texts and medical journals, proving “prior art” and not a new invention. Eventually, the USPTO revoked the patent on the basis of lack of novelty.
Inferred from the above cases, biopiracy refers to the unauthorised commercial exploitation of biological resources or traditional knowledge associated with them. This predominantly affects biodiversity-rich developing countries, without adequate consent, acknowledgement, or benefit-sharing with the original communities or knowledge-holders through patent filing on plant-based compounds, medicinal formulations, or genetic material already known and used traditionally.
The TKDL reinforces the existence of prior knowledge that has been passed down through generations. This agreement between Brazil and India can be viewed as one of the stepping stones in the long-run Indian strategy of extending TKDL access to patent offices worldwide, including earlier arrangements with the European Patent Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office to ensure that its generational knowledge is protected from wrongful commercial exclusivity.
This cooperation between India and Brazil marks the collaboration between two of the influential and powerful poles of the Global South. This South-South collaboration aligns two biodiversity-rich, traditional-knowledge-rich economies of the Global South, rather than a purely technical accommodation extended to established Northern patent offices. The dual flow of resources and access to such resources is the basic foundation of this collaboration.
Future Implications
The agreement has shifted the procedural dynamics considerably, as patent practitioners are now having to be mindful where the invention touches upon the tangents of plant-based or traditional formulations. As agreements regarding TKDL access gather momentum, the probability of the scrutiny of the patents granted to the pharmaceutical, cosmetics, or agritech companies is something which cannot be ignored.
The TKDL diplomacy can further allow us to have collaborations over the mutual transition and access of the traditional knowledge and practices which have been passed down from generation to generation in the biodiversity-rich and culturally rich countries like that of Latin America and Africa. Such collaboration could extend to joint documentation projects, capacity-building for examiners, and shared standards for benefit-sharing, strengthening South-South ties.
Conclusion
The India-Brazil TKDL Pact might appear as an institutional collaboration between two countries regarding the sharing of its rich traditional heritage; however, upon deeper analysis, it reflects something more. It is an attempt of both the countries to protect their generationally passed-down heritage, which is significant and is intrinsically attached to the identity of the country itself in the international arena.
The precedents of how developed countries like the USA and many European countries have filed for patents over the “inventions” which have been in the public domain for centuries in countries like India reinforce the need for having structured, centralised, and digital data to challenge future requests for patents which encroaches upon the domain of traditional knowledge to protect the rare, passed-down tradition from the hegemony, privatisation, and exclusivity.
This, however, raises the burden on patent practitioners. As practitioners now have to examine the documented channels to check whether the “invention” has any kind of similarity with the prior art in India. This now stresses patent practitioners to review the drafting and patent filing stage to perform risk assessments and freedom-to-operate assessments before applications are even submitted.
Also Read: Patents vs Trade Secrets in India: Strategic Choices, Reverse Engineering, and the Draft Bill 2024
