IP rights for SMEs: SMEDA, IPO agree to undertake joint awareness drive

LAHORE: The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) and the Intellectual Property Organization (IPO) have agreed to undertake the joint efforts to make SMEs aware of the significance of Intellectual Property Rights.

A meeting in this regard was held today at SMEDA head office today with IPO team headed by Chairman IPO Farrukh Amil. On this occasion SMEDA team was led by SMEDA CEO Socrat Aman Rana.

Both the teams discussed different ways and means to make SMEs aware of the IPR with a focus to strengthen the enforcement mechanism for intellectual property rights through an enhanced collaboration between SMEDA and IPO.

CEO SMEDA Socrat Aman Rana, while welcoming the IPO team assured to extend the fullest cooperation of SMEDA to enhance awareness of SMEs on IPR. He proposed to develop a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for this purpose and suggested to organize awareness sessions in the industrial clusters as collaborative events under a well-planned joint activity calendar.

The Chairman of IPO Pakistan Farrukh Amil, exchanging his views on this occasion said that SME sector can get a lot of benefits having the IPR registration. SMEDA collaboration in this regard can play vital role, he added and observed that the agriculture sector required more awareness on the intellectual property rights. He suggested putting the agriculture sector on top priority while launching the SMEDA-IPO joint awareness campaign.

Both the organizations agreed to determine specific functions of SMEDA and IPO for the proposed MOU in awareness, research and SME support. Formation of a joint working group for IP need assessment of the SME sector and sub-sectors for pilot projects were also considered on the occasion.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025