Pakistan’s Senate Committee on Commerce received good news in July 2024 that the jurisdiction’s intellectual property ranking had improved from 119th in 2016 to 88th in 2023 in the Global Innovation Index and that its compliance with IPR standards had improved per the United States Trade Representative’s Special 301 Report, which resulted in Pakistan being moved from the Priority Watch List to the Watch List.  

The news was delivered during a session of the Senate Standing Committee on Commerce, and opened with discussion between senators and the director-general of the Intellectual Property Organization of Pakistan, in which the director-general discussed the IP office’s different functions.  

In April 2025, the IP office took an important step by joining the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Inventor Assistance Program (IAP), designed to open doors for enterprising inventors and transformative innovations.  

Farukh Amil, chair of the IP office, stressed that Pakistan, given its immense natural and human resources, has to develop a culture of innovation, research and product development beyond mere words. Awareness of financial empowerment through “intellectual property is no longer a peripheral concern – it’s a vital component of national development and in the context of an agrarian economy, with a growing population, IP-protected agri-tech inventions are essential for the national economic security,” he said.  

Joining the IAP will be a big step towards achieving this goal, he added at an event in Islamabad. 

The IAP empowers innovators, connecting them with volunteers who help them navigate the patent system at no cost. Local inventors will be able to protect their inventions in Pakistan, and in select other countries. This support system ensures great ideas can be properly protected and brought to market, harnessing innovation that might otherwise remain untapped. 

“With the IAP launch, we’re investing in Pakistan’s most valuable resource – its innovators,” said Allison Mages, head of the IP commercialization section at WIPO. “This partnership equips inventors with the patent expertise needed to protect their innovations and bring them to market. Each supported innovation represents potential jobs and progress.” 

Pakistan’s is the 10th jurisdiction to join the IAP alongside Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Kenya, Morocco, Peru, the Philippines, Singapore and South Africa. The programme is expanding beyond patent drafting to include critical commercialization guidance. 

It is against this backdrop, and our optimism that intellectual property protection may soon become a priority in Pakistan, that we are announcing this, our list of Pakistan’s Top 30 IP Experts. 

First, we turned to IP professionals in the region in order to understand better what clients need today. Asia IP asked a large number of professionals – mostly in-house counsel and corporate legal managers – what they were looking for from their legal service providers. From their answers, we have compiled our list of Pakistan’s IP Experts, those lawyers who understand just what their clients need and are able to provide them with the best practical advice.  

Pakistan’s top law firms each placed a number of lawyers on our list. Heavy hitters like Ali & Associates placed four lawyers (Karimullah Adeni, Hanya Haroon, Syed Auqil Ali Shah and Ali Kabir Shah) on our list, while, Meer & Hasan (Salim Hasan, Farooq Amjad Meer and Zeeshan Ashraf Meer) and Vellani & Vellani (Didar Karim, Ameen Vellani and Badaruddin Vellani) each placed three lawyers on our list of experts.  

ALIPA (Muhammad Abeed Atif and Khadija Ijaz), Bharucha & Co. (Mohammed Fazil Bharucha and Farzana Rustom), Hamayuns (Mohsin Nusrullah and Saad Nusrullah), Sheikh Brothers (Salman Ahmed Sheikh and Sultan Sheik) and United Trademark & Patent Services (Hasan Irfan Khan and Yawar Irfan Khan) each landed two. Eight other firms each placed a single lawyer on our list. Only lawyers active in practice in offices in Pakistan were eligible for inclusion. 

Most of the lawyers named to our list have multiple practice specialties. Many of them are litigators, while others concentrate on prosecution work or provide strategic advice.  

All of them have something in common: they are experts in their fields and, in one way or another, they provide extra value for their clients. They are Asia IP’s Pakistan IP Experts. – GREGORY GLASS 

Pakistan’s IP Experts is based solely on independent editorial research conducted by Asia IP. As part of this project, we turned to thousands of in-house counsel in Pakistan and South Asia, as well as South Asia-focused partners at international law firms, and asked them to nominate private-practice lawyers, including foreign legal consultants, advisers and counsel.  

The final list reflects the nominations received combined with the input of the editorial team at Asia IP, which has more than 50 years of collective experience in researching and understanding the legal market in the region. 

All private practice intellectual property lawyers working at law firms in Pakistan were eligible for inclusion in the nomination process; there were no fees or any other requirements for inclusion. 

The names of our 30 IP Experts are published here. Each IP Expert was given the opportunity to include their biography and contact details in print and on our website, for which a fee was charged.