Speakers at a workshop stressed the need for effective implementation of laws regarding intellectual property rights (IPR) to safeguard the rights of domestic authors across the country. The workshop was jointly organised by the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) and Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (Smeda) at FPCCI on Thursday.
Owais Hassan Shaikh, Assitant Director, Trade Marks, Ghulam Mujtaba, Patent Examiner, Nasrullah, Assitant Director, Copyrights, and Hina Anwar, Patent Help Line Officer spoke on the occasion.
They lamented that lack of proper implementation of the laws to protect IPR, Pakistani authors were losing benefits from their creations. They termed inadequate knowledge regarding IPR laws as a major hurdle for its effective execution, saying that authority could only take action against IPR violators, if authors registered their complains against them.
They said that authors should take collective effort to register complains and provides platform to the authority for taking action against violator to safeguard their rights. They said that IPR laws are frequently misunderstood, registration is not compulsory to secure copyrights. There are, however, certain definite advantages to registration.
They said that laws protect original works of authorship that are fixed in a tangible form of expression, which may be communicated with the aid of a machine or device. They added that literary works, musical works, dramatic works, pictorial, graphic, sculptural works, motion pictures and other audio visual works, sound recordings and architectural works are protected by the laws.
They said that IPR is also transferable but the transfer of exclusive rights is not valid unless that transfer is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed or such owner's duly authorised agent. In almost all developing countries, domestic authors are getting royalty on their creations and their interests have to be kept paramount. However, in Pakistan, IPR laws are being violated without fear of punishment, they said. A large number of people belonging from several organisations were present on the occasion.
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