ISLAMABAD: Minister for Commerce Khurram Dastgir Khan has said that Intellectual Property Organization (IPO) Pakistan and State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) China have agreed on a text of draft to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU). However, he said that the MoU will be signed after approval from the cabinet .
The minister directed Secretary Commerce and Chairman IPO-Pakistan to ensure that both IPO-Pakistan and SIPO China consult each other in order to have collective stance on major issues of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
Speaking in a high level meeting with Chinese delegation led by Deputy Commissioner State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) China Dr HE Zhimin, Secretary Commerce Azmat Ali Ranjha and Chairman Intellectual Property Organization (IPO) of Pakistan Shahid Rashid, the Minister for Commerce instructed them to work on achieving high priority cooperation in patent examination, particularly on how to use IT in patent examination and to learn from Chinese experience.
The minister said that Pakistan would like to learn from the experience of China, especially in the field of Patent, Registration and Examination.
He supported the idea of formally signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between IPO-Pakistan and SIPO-China for fruitful cooperation and promotion of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) culture in both the countries.
He also assured the delegation that the government of Pakistan would provide full support to the initiatives of SIPO in enhancing bilateral, technical and promotional cooperation with IPO-Pakistan.
Dastgir maintained that Pakistan would certainly like to learn from the SIPO about the use of Information Technology skills for the better and efficient enforcement of IPRs in the country.
Zhimin thanked the minister for sparing time and appraised the minister about the decisions taken in the recent meetings held between SIPO and IPO-Pakistan. The Chinese dignitary appreciated the steps taken by the government of Pakistan to promote IPR culture in Pakistan.
He informed that the visit of the delegation of SIPO was very fruitful and both the organizations explored new areas of cooperation in the field of IPRs. He further said that the draft MoU will help in establishing even close cooperative relationship between the two offices to facilitate further our future cooperation.
Chairman IPO-Pakistan, Shahid Rashid said that during the discussion both IPO-Pakistan and SIPO China looked at several areas especially area of Patents, exchange of information, exchange of experiences, technical assistance, training of personnel and one additional opportunity was offered by SIPO that Masters in Law, which is a 2 year program has been offered to IPO-Pakistan employees.
Earlier, the delegation visited IPO-Pakistan to discuss and initialize the draft MoU which will be formally signed between IPO-Pakistan and SIPO after its approval from the Cabinet. During the two day visit, the Chinese delegation held high level meetings with the IPO-Pakistan and visited COMSATS and NUST universities.
