A workshop at the Faculty of Pharmacy on intellectual property rights in cooperation with the Academy of Scientific Research

Coinciding with the launch of the National Strategy for Intellectual Property by the President of the Republic, and under the auspices of Prof. Mahmoud El-Meteini - President of Ain Shams University, Prof. Ayman Saleh, Vice President for Postgraduate Studies and Research, and Prof. Amani Osama Kamel - Dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy. The Faculty organized a workshop on intellectual property rights in cooperation with the Academy of Scientific Research, the Patent Office and the Third World Network under the title "Intellectual Property and How to Obtain Medicines" in the presence of Dr. Mona Mohamed Yahya - Director of the Patent Center, Prof. Khaled Abu Shanab - Vice Dean for Postgraduate Studies and Research, Prof. Rehab Othman - Vice Dean for Student Education Affairs, Prof. Rola Melad - Vice Dean for Community Service and Environmental Development Affairs, faculty staff, the teaching assistants, and students in the various years of the Faculty.

The workshop dealt with several themes, the most important of which are: the global system for the protection of intellectual property and patents, which was established with the establishment of the World Trade Organization, the Egyptian law for the protection of intellectual property rights and the most important flexibility and measures stipulated in it in order to protect public health and make medicine available, and the policy of the Egyptian Patent Office in examining Pharmaceutical patent applications, which is the policy that guarantees enforcement of the law in a way that protects the public interest and public health, and the experiences of some other countries in using the flexibilities of the TRIPS agreement in order to ensure the availability of medicine.

The lectures were delivered by a group of specialists in this field, and they are: Prof. Hossam Al-Saghir, Professor of Commercial Law and Founding Director of the Regional Institute for Intellectual Property, which was established in cooperation with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2006 at Helwan University, and Dr. Eman Saleh Ibrahim, Vice President of the Egyptian Patent Office, Dr. Rasha Gamal Lotfi, Head of the Pharmaceutical Patent Examination Department at the Patent Office, and Dr. Marie Gerges Mikhael, Pharmacist Patent Examiner at the Egyptian Patent Office, Dr. Heba Wanis, researcher in public health and drug policy, Ms. Sheetali Rao, legal researcher and intellectual property rights attorney, and Mr. K. M. Gopakumar, a senior researcher and legal advisor at Third World Network based in New Delhi, India.

At the end of the two days of the workshop, Prof. Amani Osama Kamel - Dean of the Faculty, in the presence, especially of the assistant staff and students of the faculty, and their keenness to benefit from increasing the percentage of patents in Egypt in general and the Faculty of Pharmacy in particular.

Her Excellency distributed certificates of attendance presented by the Patent Office and the Faculty of Pharmacy.