The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) is an Indian digital knowledge repository of the traditional knowledge, especially about medicinal plants and formulations used in Indian systems of medicine. History Set up in 2001, as a collaboration between the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and then-Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (India) the objective of the library is to protect the ancient and traditional knowledge of the country from exploitation through biopiracy and unethical patents, by documenting it electronically and classifying it as per international patent classification systems. Apart from that, the non-patent database serves to foster modern research based on traditional knowledge, as it simplifies access to this vast knowledge of remedies or practices. As of 2010, it had transcribed 148 books on Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Yoga in public domain, into 34 million pages of information, translated into five languages — English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese. Data on 80,000 formulations in Ayurveda, 1,000,000 in Unani and 12,000 in Siddha had already been put in the TKDL. Plus it has signed agreements with leading international patent offices such as European Patent Office (EPO), United Kingdom Trademark & Patent Office (UKPTO) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office to protect traditional knowledge from biopiracy, by giving patent examiners at international patent offices access to the TKDL database for patent search and examination. The issue of biopiracy and unethical bioprospecting made headlines after the government of India successfully revoked or limited turmeric and basmati rice patents granted by United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the neem patent granted by European Patent Office (EPO) in the late 1990s. Soon more such patent claims came to light. India’s vast traditional medicine knowledge existed in languages like Sanskrit, Hindi, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Tamil, making it inaccessible for examiners at international patent offices to verify claims. This experience prompted the Department of AYUSH, government of India to create a task force of experts in the areas of traditional medicine systems of India (i.e., Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Yoga), patent examiners, IT experts, scientists and technical officers, for the creation Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL). It was initiated in 2001. The tasks included, for example, transcribing Sanskrit shlokas which describe an Ayurvedic formulation in text, using Traditional Knowledge Resource Classification (TKRC) devised for the purpose, so that it is easily understandable to any patent examiner, anywhere in the world. For