By Sarah
Fendrick —

On November 23, 2009, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and India's Department of Industrial Policy and
Promotion (DIPP) announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) regarding comprehensive
bilateral cooperation on intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and
enforcement.  The MOU was
signed in an effort to create a cooperative relationship between the USPTO and
India's Intellectual Property Organisation.  In order to facilitate this cooperative effort, a number of
initiatives have been proposed including programs that provide "exposure
to patent examination practices, exchange of information on patent databases
and patent manuals, IPR awareness programs, exchange of information on
traditional knowledge and genetic resources, exchanges of best practices, and
other matters."

In
addition to the signing of the MOU, India granted access to U.S. patent examiners of its new traditional knowledge search tool.  The new search
tool is a digital database containing 200,000 traditional medicine formulations
on Ayurveda, Unani, and Siddha, and thousands of years of India's accumulated
traditional knowledge.  The search tool provides an English translation of
the 30 million pages in the database opening a vast amount of knowledge that
was once unsearchable.  The newly acquired
access to the database will help address the issue of misappropriation of traditional
knowledge through the mistaken issuance of patents, a growing concern in the
global economy.

According to a press release regarding the MOU, "[t]he
two offices will immediately begin planning the implementation of these
cooperative projects under the MOU."