The Director-General, Intellectual Property Rights Organisation (IPRO), Muhammad Yaseen Tahir, here on Friday called upon the lawyers, legal advisors and other trade-related officials to equip themselves with intellectual property rights (IPR) laws to safeguard national interests in the international market.
Addressing a three-day training workshop of lawyers on World Trade Organisation (WTO) intellectual property rights, he said that acquisition of IPRs was imperative to face the challenges in the WTO regime. The workshop was organised by International Islamic University in collaboration with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
He said that legal departments of trade and industries and the local business community were not fully aware about the advantages and disadvantages of the WTO.
"They should acquire maximum knowledge about the implications and complications of IPR laws to pull themselves out of financial crunch," he added.
He said that WTO laws simultaneously provided the global trade advantages and challenges for most of the developing countries, including Pakistan. He lauded the efforts of the International Islamic University (IIU) for focusing on WTO IPR education, saying that the university was rendering a great national service by conducting courses on WTO agreements.
He stressed on all chambers of commerce, bar associations and other trade bodies to arrange training workshops on WTO IPR with the cooperation of IIU to enable the concerned people to defend their interests in international trade.
Course Coordinator and Senior Consultant, WTO, Professor Muhammad Bashir Ghuman said that IIU would arrange a chain of such courses in Islamabad, Karachi, Sialkot and other industrial cities of the country to educate trade related people about the present and future challenges of WTO. Later, the participants of the course were awarded certificates.