The Khadi appropriation

A German company trademarks 'khadi'

The trade name "Khadi", under which the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) sells a variety of its products, is in trouble in Europe. Khadi Naturprodukte, a German company, has registered "Khadi" as a trademark for its own range of herbal products like shampoos, soaps and oils. Many of these items are said to be similar to the Indian-origin products of the KVIC - an arm of the ministry of micro, small and medium enterprises - that has lately been endeavouring to introduce trademarked products abroad. The German company's website reportedly claims khadi is a "unique brand for the European market and exclusively available with us". Though hand-spun khadi as promoted by Mohandas Gandhi during the freedom struggle does not figure on the company's current list of products, it does point out that its online shop is constantly adding new products. Little wonder, therefore, that both the Indian government and the KVIC are perturbed over this development, and the latter has formally sought annulment of the trademark granted to the German company.

This is not the first time that India has stared at a long and costly legal battle abroad to thwart a bid to usurp its traditional knowledge-based commercial products. It has, in the past, gone through similar litigation to foil bids to appropriate the therapeutic, cosmetic and other uses of neem and turmeric, widely known among traditional healers. Even scented fine-grained aromatic basmati rice, grown exclusively on the Indian subcontinent, faced challenges from foreign companies that launched their own aromatic rice varieties under similar sounding brand names, such as Jasmati, Kasmati and the like.

Going by the opinion of the intellectual property rights (IPR) experts, the task of safeguarding khadi as a trademark may be more daunting than the standard geographical-indicator or traditional-knowledge issue, as the question boils down essentially to a registered versus non-registered trademark in a particular market. A registered trademark invariably enjoys stronger legal protection, which gives the markholder the right not only to prevent others from using that brand name but also to seek damages from the infringer. To get the trademark cancelled, the KVIC may need to prove that its products have been selling in Europe under this trademark well before the German company. This may be difficult to do. The case would have been different had the German company also begun to market hand-spun cloth, which has for a long time been an internationally known traditional Indian fabric, and associated with the name "Khadi".

As part of its strategy to preempt and prevent piracy of its ancient wisdom, India has created a digital library of traditional Indian knowledge and put it in the public domain to make it accessible to IPR-related institutions all over the world. However, this library has served a limited purpose till now, as its contents are confined primarily to Indian traditional medicine. This database needs to be expanded expeditiously to include other typical Indian traditional knowledge-driven products, including handicrafts. Otherwise, India would continue to confront commercial challenges of this kind.