Nabeela Rasheed Emphasizes Need for Protecting Patents
By Engineer Mujeeb Osman
Chicago, Illinois: Dr. Nabeela Rasheed, an intellectual property attorney and a shareholder at McAndrews, Held & Malloy Ltd, Chicago, spoke on "Protecting Patents and Providing Medicines on a Global Platform" on Tuesday, February 15, 2011. Dr Rasheed has a very distinguished resume and her talk was exceptionally rewarding and informative.
Soft-spoken Dr. Nabeela Rasheed elaborated on her presentation hosted by East–West Perspective at East–West University, Chicago, Illinois. She stated how President Barak Obama in his Union of State Speech had emphasized on innovation matters and encouraged the innovators and inventors to “Hug a Patent Attorney.” That is how an intellectual property attorney can help secure the benefits of innovations to inventors.
She informed that the USA still grants more patents to inventors and entrepreneurs that encourage innovation. But now the world has become more competitive and China and India have realized that they now could also compete in the race of innovation in this new world.
Dr. Nabeela Rasheed presented a brief history of Patent Law enactment that took place in 15th Century when England issued the first patent. But now the US Patent and Trademark Office, European Patent Office and Japan Patent Office are reporting a decline in filing of patent applications by 14%, 8% and 16% respectively while China Patent Office reported increase in filing by 18%. India and China in 2009 were the third and fourth largest user of the US Patent System.
Dr. Rasheed added that the " greatest challenge for the patent systems will be to convince society that patents have a role to play and are in the public interest. Children dying on the streets without access to medicines provide powerful symbols," said Dr. Sandy Thomas, Director, Nuffield Council on Bioethics and therefore a continued tussle between Patent Rights and Patients Rights is an issue between the legal patent rights and ethical and social values that requires mutual understanding and balancing act to resolve the issues and problems.
The Q&A part after the talk was also very interesting. Dr. Wasiullah Khan, Chancellor, and other members of East-West University thanked Dr Rasheed for her eloquent speech and discussion on the subject.
Attendees included East West University Alumni President Mujeeb Osman, Rashid Jahangir, Asma Adnan, Jesus Pacheo, Shabbir Mirza, and Carolyn Fowlkes.
