KARACHI: Speakers at a panel discussion stressed upon spreading awareness and evolving a mechanism to implement the rules and regulations to protect Intellectual Property (IP) rights.
Speakers were John Cabeca, US IP Counselor for South Asia; Maleeha Mimi Bangash, CEO, Digital Banking, Investment & Corporate Banking; Ameena Saeed, MD, Lightstone Publishers, and Dr Iffat Zafar Aga, Co-founder Sehat Kahani.
The event was organized by Ali & Associates in collaboration with the US Consulate Karachi to celebrate World Intellectual Property Day 2023 at PACC auditorium here. The theme for this year is “Women and Intellectual Property, accelerating innovation and creativity”.
John Cabeca said that they had conducted a study in 2017-18 on women IP and found that there was no data on women inventors, while the study conducted in 2019 depicted a comparatively different picture as the percentage of women inventors, who filed patents for their inventions, rose to 16-18 per cent, causing to spark a discussion to educate companies to promote women in creative activities.
Furthermore, he said that the ratio of men and women was 50-50 in the technology sector, adding that the number of women in this regard is increasing, but there was much more to do.
Maleeha said that IP is an essential part of avoiding market dominance and providing an enabling environment for innovation and creation, adding that Pakistan has one of the best IP rules and regulations, but the problem is a need for more awareness and enforcement.
“We need to spread technology-based awareness and evolve a mechanism for effective enforcement of rules and regulations,” she said and added that we must initiate a program on financial literacy.
Ameena Saiyad said it is a myth that pirated books are a good source for developing nations like Pakistan. While sharing her experience, she said that pirated books are being sold at the price of the actual book, but huge discounts are for the booksellers for preferring pirated books over original publication.
Quoting the examples of Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi, she said there are many examples where people are compelled to work for a living due to the non-enforcement of IP rules and regulations.
“Peoples are now reluctant to make their work public as they fear that their work would be stolen.” She also suggested having a session on IP at literature festivals and offered to publish books on IP for kids.
Iffat highlighted the issues being faced by the women entrepreneurs, saying that women were being exploited due to a lack of funding resources for them and added that investors were reluctant to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) in most of the cases, and women entrepreneurs were also compelled to share a large portion of their data to get funds. She believed that awareness could play an important role in changing the situation.
Karimullah Adeni, the managing partner of Ali & Associates, believed that penalties and effective enforcement of laws could only bring change. A large number of people from different walks of life attended the event.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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