Recognizing indigenous traditional knowledge with medicinal value within a legal framework: an overview of the issues and challenges with special focus on India

Recognizing traditional knowledge with medical value among Indigenous people is indispensable to sustaining their way of life. However, legal complexities and challenges exist in recognizing the medical value of traditional knowledge, as it is orally transmitted and thus undocumented. While a global solution to such difficulties cannot employ a “one size fits all” approach and invokes multifaceted solutions within national regulatory and policy contexts, India has shown progress in this area. Yet, appropriate guidelines for incorporating the diverse medical knowledge of Indigenous people under a coherent framework must be developed so that Indigenous people can enjoy, and utilize, their rights regarding this knowledge. The objective was to unfold the current situation of traditional medicinal value among Indian Indigenous communities and find ways of recognizing this knowledge within India’s intellectual property rights (IPR) legal regime. The present study was based on secondary data sources. A specific literature review was done using the key word “Traditional Knowledge”, combined with “Intellectual Property Rights”, “Tribes”, “Medicinal Plant”, “Ethno-medicine”, “Folk Lore”, “Medical Anthropology”, “World Health Organization (WHO)”, “Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL)”, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), “Patent Act”, “Illness and Sickness” and “India” on PubMed, Google Scholar and other relevant online and offline sources from March 2021 to September 2023. Our findings recommend a multi-tiered approach to documenting traditional medical knowledge, sensitive to regional diversities within India, as a necessary precursor to legal recognition. Therefore, a human rights approach, particularly from the viewpoint of cultural rights, could be a best fit both to recognize the traditional knowledge as a cultural right and to offer the community as the right holder of the knowledge. Hence, appropriate guidelines to that direction should be formulated for incorporating the dispersed traditional medical knowledge of Indigenous people under a coherent framework so that they can enjoy, and utilize, their rights to this knowledge especially in the diverse Indian context.