IPR and regulatory centre of Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India (Pharmexcil), setup by the ministry of commerce & industry recently organised an interactive meeting with Chaitanya Prasad, IAS, CGPDTM and Dr Raja Shekar Vundru, IAS, joint secretary, DoP in Mumbai. Following this event the council also organised a seminar on intellectual property rights (IPR) and regulatory matters in Hyderabad.  

The programmes were organized by Pharmexcil with the support of Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP), ministry of chemicals and fertilizers. Dr Vundru, and Prasad, were briefed by the representatives from the member companies on issues relating to IPR, regulatory and policy matters.  

During the meet, Prasad promised in bringing out better access of patent database to the public. Simultaneously, Dr Vundru invited proposals relating to pharmaceutical sector on the issues that were raised during the session.

During the seminar that was organised in Hyderabad Dr Vundru who was the chief guest at the event highlighted the importance of intellectual property rights and spoke on the trend and changes that are taking place globally relating to regulatory and intellectual property rights.  Mridul Jain, joint secretary, DoC put forward the provision of schemes provided by the government for the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry.

Dr Vundru ensured the governments support to the IPR and regulatory centre at Pharmexcil, Hyderabad for promoting IPR and regulatory activities for the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry and to the pharmaceutical professionals.  Based on the response of the industry, Pharmexcil is expected to start a IPR and regulatory centre within next three months at the Mumbai office. The objective of IPR and regulatory centre at Pharmexcil is to bring awareness of such databases and cross the barrier so that both innovations and exports increase.

With the support of DoP, Pharmexcil subscribed to popular and expensive databases like Orbit patent database, Dialog Pro patent database, non-patent literature database for the members to best utilise the knowledge resources.  Pharmexcil is also keen to add such additional knowledge databases for access by the members particularly SME category.     

Dr P V Appaji, director general, Pharmexcil revealed  that the changes made by European regulatory directive with the introduction of a new term falsified medicinal products and the impending danger to export of APIs to Europe are due to proposed changes.

Dr Appaji also briefed about pharmaceutical inspection convention (PIC) and pharmaceutical inspection co-operation scheme (PIC/S) that brings out a mutual understanding among countries, drug regulatory authorities leading to inspection uniformity.   

During the occasion he put forward the benefits and suggested the industry for appropriate feedback keeping in mind micro, small, medium, large and mega industry relating to EU directive and PIC/S.
Dr G G. Nair, IPR advisor, Pharmexcil and other speakers made presentations with a view to create  awareness relating to Intellectual Property Rights; prior art search; patentability assessment and freedom to operate.  He advised the members to best utilise the patent databases at Pharmexcil offices.

N R Munjal, chairman, Pharmexcil, briefed about the importance of intellectual property rights in the current scenario.  Ashutosh Gupta, vice chairman, Pharmexcil briefed about the proposals made to government of India on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry for some of regulatory protocol expenses as reimbursement.