A Case Study on Applicability of Intellectual Property Rights to the Traditional Medical Systems of Asia and Africa

Abstract

Today with an ever increasing population, and the recent Pandemic of COVID-19 still in force throughout the world, agricultural innovation is getting vital in order to increase the productivity and secure the global food supply but agriculture research and development is always a costly affair and while previously it was undertaken mainly by public sector, today the private sector is adopting the work of Research & Development specifically in the area of biotechnology. Thereafter we see that in the modern world in both the developed and developing countries use of herbal medicines, phytonutrients and nutraceuticals are expanding rapidly as many persons are resorting to these products for treatment of various health problems within various national healthcare settings but many of these products have remained untested and their use are also not monitored which has caused problems in acquiring proper knowledge of the adverse effects of these medicines and therapies used, creating safety related issues for the persons who are using them along with causing obstacles in proper promotion of these products and methods throughout the world. Intellectual Property (IP) refers to the creations of mind such as inventions, literary and artistic works, designs, symbols, names and images and these are protected by laws like Patents, Copyrights, trademarks etc, which enable people to earn recognition or financial benefits from what they invent or create. Previously machines were considered for invention or artistic creations and were protected by the Intellectual Property Rights and the assignment of IPRs to living things is relatively a recent phenomenon in the developed countries but today agriculture is seen as an industry that cannot survive without research, development and investments. This situation made it necessary to extend protections of IPRs in all its forms to the agriculture sector also. Then we see that recently not only Ayurveda of India but also other Traditional medical systems of Africa and South America has also started getting recognitions throughout the world as a rationale system of medicine and so it is absolutely necessary to understand the concept, rules, regulations, present status, controlling authorities of Intellectual Property Rights to protect and promote the ideas about these types of treatments and medicines and make them acceptable throughout the world without any constraints for the development of the developing and underdeveloped countries of the Asia, Africa and South American continents . In this paper we will study the impact of Intellectual Property Rights on the traditional medical treatment systems of continents of Asia, Africa and will try to examine how Intellectual Property Rights can be applied to protect and increase the production of medicines developed from medicinal herbs in the developing and underdeveloped countries of Asia and African countries along with a special reference to India. This study has been casual, exploratory and empirical in nature and the data needed for research work has been collected by using both direct and indirect methods of data collection..