Aligarh : The department of Botany is organizing a three days National workshop and skill development program on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) from 25th to 27th February, with objectives to make students, research scholars, and faculty members aware about the theoretical and practical knowledge of IPR with emphasis on plant variety rights.

Presiding the inaugural session, AMU Vice-Chancellor, Prof Tariq Mansoor, deliberated on the importance of the department of Botany and acknowledged the role and achievements of its faculty members in the academic field. He highlighted that IPR is applicable to almost every field. He encouraged the faculty members to conduct a multidisciplinary research in collaboration with other departments and other national and international Universities. He also shared a brief idea about a separate patent cell of AMU that formulated patent policies for patent filing (available on the University website) and informed that the entire fee for patent filing would be provided by the University itself.

Chief Guest, Deputy Controller of Patents and Design Mr Sameer Kumar Swarup spoke about the role of IPR in the academic institutions and emphasized why and how budding scientists can protect the illegal use of their ideas, information, knowledge and the products. He went on to discuss the goals of National Intellectual Property Awareness Mission (NIPAM) to make 1 million students aware about property rights.

Addressing the inaugural session, the guest of honour, an alumna and founder of NextGen, Life Sciences PVT, LTD Dr Nagma Abbasi, referred IPR as mind’s creation and emphasized the need to have proper information about patent filing, design of logo and other aspects of IPR in the field of plant sciences.

Dean, Faculty of Life Science, AMU, Prof M Afzal talked about the rise in the development of products in laboratories, startups and industries that led to creation of knowledge and discussed the ethical ways of producing and presenting data in the form of publications in journals.

Prof M Badruzzaman Siddiqui, Chairperson Department of Botany in his welcome address presented an overview of the department and highlighted the achievements of the faculty members. He also talked about the holistic IPR covering all its components like patents, designs, trademarks, copyright and plant variety rights.

Organizing Secretary Prof Shamsul Hayat extended vote of thanks and acknowledged the untiring efforts of all the faculty members, students and other concerned persons in conducting the workshop.Prof Qazi Fariduddin from the Department of Botany and Er Shamshad Ali from University Polytechnic, AMU were Organizing Secretaries of this workshop.