Innovation is the key to the advancement of an economy. Intellectual property rights(IPR) allow innovative entrepreneurs and enterprises to protect their inventions and new business ideas. This makes the protection of intellectual property rights(IPR) a crucial factor for the development of a country. Unfortunately, the impact of IPR in India is currently facing challenges. Violations are rife because of poor enforcement of rights and this scenario calls for adept assistance to enforce the protection of patents, trademarks, and copyrights. Helping entrepreneurs and enterprises with IPR is Gopakumar Nair Associates (GNAs), a premier intellectual property consultancy and legal advisory firm that provides highquality legal and technical solutions for companies across different sectors including biotechnology, biomedical, and chemical, health care, pharmaceutical, and other knowledge based industries.

The Inception Story
Founded by Dr. Gopakumar Nair in 2002 the firm provides services in IP, patents, trademarks designs, copyrights and related documentation and prosecutions. Over the course of his career Nair managed to gain insights into intellectual properties, patents, and related amendments to Indian acts rules and agreements and has almost five decades of work experience in the pharma industry. In addition to this firm, Nair has also founded CIPROM(Centre for Intellectual Property Management) in 2022 and GNA Patent Gurukul, to provide training in patent law, prosecution, and practice.

The firm understands the current challenges in this landscape and intends to play their role in addressing those issues. For instance, the generation of monetary funding requires protection of IP (intellectual property)/patents for exclusive commercialization and/or licensing of protected IPs such as patents, trademarks and designs. That being said, there is a need for active contribution from the Indian government, Indian entrepreneurs, researchers, and inventors to generate more IPs, protect and create value and convert the intangibles to tangibles of financial assets.

Even though the government of India is actively promoting and pursuing IPs, the firm understands the major gap that exists in the Indian legal system and in the fabric of Indian industry and academic institutions. "Much more needs to be done by the industry and the professionals to pursue the IPR(intellectual property rights) generation and wealth creation route to the progress of service, industry and nation", states Dr. Gopakumar. Consequently, the firm was founded to help Indian inventors, entrepreneurs, and domestic Indian industry and academia to deal with the global challenges and also help them in achieving higher levels of IP proficiency, practice, and protection to cope and face international challenges. So far, GNAs have been successful in achieving their objective by competing with their peers in the IP practice who works for multinational, international and fortune 500 companies. "Our goal is to help Indian professionals, inventors, Indian research institutions, and Indian home grown industries to flourish and become global payers through the IP/patent technology commercialization and licensing route to progress from local to global regimes and domains", affirms Dr. Gopakumar.

Unparalleled Competency
The firm continues to be a leading consultancy in the country by offering various services from grass route training in IP/patents and creating awareness and proficiency in IP to help Indian companies, researchers, and inventors to understand the importance of IP in value creation and asset building. Over the years the firm has succeeded in achieving this mission by offering all the required services and intellectual inputs.

With a methodology to provide optimum services to their clients, GNAs is in the process of transforming from a proprietorship company to an LLP. For this reason, the firm has founded Gnanlex Associates LLP to aid them to cater to the needs of the community. Moreover, they intend to help their Indian clients to become global players and look forward to start working for multinationals and transnationals. "The process is on and we are doing the hand holding and providing the thrust and energy inputs to our potential clients", concludes Dr. Gopakumar.