The country's experiment in winning the controversial claim on turmeric couple of years ago had been a costlier one. In a recent case, RiceTec of the USA had claimed that it is the real owner of basmati rice. The case is still pending with the US Patent office and the government is said to be preparing itself to challenge the claim.

Not wanting to repeat similar instances, last Thursday, the Spices Board released a set of three CD-Roms including a Compendium of Spices containing comprehensive details on six major spices including pepper, ginger, turmeric, chillies, garlic and fenugreek. The CD-Roms also contain activities of the Spices Board and a list of spice exporters, apart from a catalogue of the country's spices in general.

The CD-Rom set was formally released by ministry of commerce and industry joint secretary SM Acharya during the inaugural ceremony of the three-day 5th World Spice Congress that concluded on Saturday. "With globalisation, spices is no more an Indian activity," Acharya said while releasing the set of CD-Roms.

Speaking to The Financial Express, Spices Board chairman V Jayashankar said, "In order to prevent any one claiming patent rights for Indian spices, we have released the Compendium of Spices as both hard copies and also in the CD-Rom format. It has been a mammoth exercise compiling relevant data from the ancient scriptures to modern age".

"Now that the compendium is released, we will send the same to all the embassies in major countries," he said. In the latest case of frivolous claims for patent for an exclusively Indian product, couple of employees of a UK-based Japanese firm had applied to the UK Patent office claiming patent for curry, an exclusively Indian product for ages, which has now become a part of the western cuisine. It was in mid-November last year that the Spices Board took up the case through Indian embassy in the UK and challenged the claim on curry.

The authorities of the UK Patent office have informed the Spices Board that the claim will not be granted as there was no invention in making curry.Accordingly, the applicants are said to have lost the case in the first round to India, but the firm is said to have appealed once again hoping to win the case. Sources in Spices Board said, "The applicants stand no chance of winning the claimed patent right for curry".

The Compendium of Spices is said to be a comprehensive one containing extensive details of the six spices. The details include the origin of these spices, ancient literature on them, botanical names, various properties like nutritional, neutraceutical, medicinal, pharmaceutical, cosmetic properties, their flavours and even fragrances. Even the current availability of these spices from across the world, the respective cultural practices adopted by each country in growing and cultivating the spices and their respective applications too are enumerated in the compendium.

"In fighting claims-serious and frivolous-we lacked relevant details of the respective products. Over the next couple of years we will try to comply relevant details for other important spices as well so as to prevent anyone laying claims for Indian spices," said Jayashankar.

"In fighting the cases of patent claims by foreigners on primarily Indian products what is required is a collective effort from all the concerned and is not an independent effort," said a leading exporter. "Currently, this collective approach seems to be missing and rather detrimental to the country." The problem areas in such cases was the absence of the authenticated data on traditional Indian products, which helps the foreigners to exploit this weakness on India's part.

The compendium of the Spices Board is therefore, a major initiative to authenticate the relevant date on Indian Spices.