The Pharmaceutical Export Promotion Council of India (Pharmexcil), in association with department of pharmaceuticals (DoP), is organizing a seminar on 'Intellectual Property Rights' (IPR) and regulatory issues’ on August 24, 2012 in Chennai.

The one-day seminar, which is scheduled to be held at Hotel Savera, Dr Radhakrishan Road, is aimed at discussing various issues relating to IPR and regulatory matters that are concerning the pharmaceutical sector.

In spite of having achieved a significant growth in pharmaceuticals, today India is still lagging behind in the areas of new inventions, innovation and high end R&D. The basic reason for this is lack of investment and of course rusty regulations which have been created way back in 50’s and 60’s. There is a great need for these regulations to be moulded in accordance with the present conditions of this internet world.

Coming to intellectual property rights, analysts feel that India still has to go a long way to build a robust law to protect the intellectual property rights. As most of the foreign investors consider that India has a very liberal law pertaining to protecting IPR, not many are showing interest in investing in the drug discovery domain, instead they prefer to outsource services from the Indian local pharma companies.

In view of this, such seminars would definitely give an insight into the prevailing issues and will enable the policy makers to look into possible additions and deletions in accordance with the industry needs.

G Selvaraj, director, Drugs Control of Tamil Nadu is expected to be the chief guest of the event. Dr G Nair, IPR advisor to Pharmexcil, is expected to deliver a presentation on the topic of ‘Patentable subject matter in Pharmaceuticals’, while Vandana Venkateswarlu will give a presentation on infringement analysis in the first half.

During the second half, Dr S Padmaja is expected to give some insights on the topic of ‘Strategies for generic drug development’. The other topics such as ‘applications of eCTD/SAS in pharmaceutical industry’ and ‘WHO GMP/ICH guidelines’ will be discussed by industry representatives and government officials.

“As the seminar is going to deal with the very contemporary topic of IPR and Regulatory matters, many industry professionals, R&D investors, students and entrepreneurs can get a good knowledge on the subject and can also put forward their views and even can get their doubts clarified on related issues if any. I would say this event will be fruitful to all those related to pharma industry,” said Dr P V Appaji, DG, Pharmexcil.