Mysuru: A one-day workshop on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in Life Sciences was organised by Division of Biochemistry, School of Life Sciences, JSS Academy of Higher Education & Research (JSS AHER), in association with S&H partners, Bengaluru, recently.

The workshop was inaugurated by Dr. Surinder Singh, Vice-Chancellor of JSS AHER. In his inaugural address, he emphasised about the recent trends in IPR and mentioned how patenting is essential especially in the field of Pharmacy, Medicine and Life Sciences.

Dr. Surinder Singh cited the example of how the Indian Patents Act enabled India’s first compulsory license being awarded to Natco, Hyderabad-based drug makers for the preparation and marketing of Sorafenib tosylate used to treat kidney cancer. He emphasised how such moves enabled the reduction in the drug’s price and led to wide access of this life saving medicine in India. He encouraged the students to take part actively and get the maximum exposure as the workshop has Patent Attorneys as the resource persons.

Organising Secretary, Dr. Raghu Ram Achar briefed about the theme of the workshop.  The first session provided introductory exposure to the terminologies in IPR while the second session provided the exposure to the drafting of claims using appropriate cases from the field of Life Sciences and Pharma industry.

A heterogeneous set of participants from various colleges and departments pursuing M.Sc in Biochemistry, Bioinformatics, Genetics and Genomics, Molecular Biology, Microbiology, and Environmental Sciences; BE (Biotechnology); and Research Scholars participated in the workshop. 

Dr. B. Manjunatha, Registrar; Dr. S. Balasubramanian, Dean-Faculty of Life Sciences  and Director-Research; D.S. Sunethra and Edwin Selvaraj, Patent Attorneys; Dr. J.R. Kumar, Dr. J.M.Siddesha were present during the event.