The Intellectual Property Organization of Pakistan has opened an Intellectual Property Facilitation Desk at the Gujranwala Chamber of Commerce and Industry and held an awareness session with the All Pakistan Aluminium Utensils Manufacturers Association, as part of its effort to bring services closer to one of the country’s major industrial centers. The desk will guide entrepreneurs, manufacturers, and businesses on registering and protecting trademarks, patents, and industrial designs, helping local producers build their competitiveness in domestic and international markets. For a city whose factories supply a wide range of goods, having this guidance on site means business owners no longer need to travel to a distant office to register and defend their brands.
Director General Nauman Aslam Sheikh inaugurated the desk during his visit to Gujranwala, accompanied by Mueed Aman Rana, Director and In-charge of the IPO-Pakistan Regional Office Lahore, Shakra Khursheed, Senior Examiner for Patents, and other officials. Addressing the business community, he said intellectual property protection is essential for safeguarding business interests, encouraging innovation, and raising the commercial value of Pakistani products. He pointed to recent institutional reforms and better service delivery at the organization, and said the backlog of trademark applications has been cut sharply over the past year, with the registration period falling from about two years to roughly eight months. He added that an Alternative Dispute Resolution mechanism is being put in place so that intellectual property disputes can be settled in a timely manner.
The event at the chamber drew its senior leadership and members. Those present included President Ghulam Hussain Judge, Senior Vice President Arshad Mughal, and Vice President Rana Muhammad Farhan Asghar, along with former President Mian Umer Saleem, former Chairman of the Gujranwala Development Authority Aamir Rehman, and former Vice President and Executive Member Waqas Afzal Mughal. Members of the Executive Committee and representatives of local industries also attended. The chamber leadership welcomed the desk and voiced confidence that it would help businesses understand and protect their intellectual property rights, a concern that grows as local manufacturers compete for customers in export markets where brand identity carries real weight.
Separately, Nauman Aslam Sheikh served as chief guest at a session organized with the All Pakistan Aluminium Utensils Manufacturers Association. The session covered trademark registration, brand protection, patents, and industrial designs, and explained why each matters for manufacturers who want to protect their products, innovations, and market identity. Participants were urged to treat intellectual property as a valuable commercial asset and to make fuller use of the legal mechanisms available to them. Both engagements form part of a wider push by the organization to build closer ties with chambers, trade associations, and industrial clusters across the country, and the new desk in Gujranwala gives that effort a permanent presence in a city where the demand for such services is expected to be high.
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