Kirthisiri Jayasinghe - 50 years in legal profession
Kirthisiri Jayasinghe, Attorney-at-Law, completes fifty years in the
legal profession this month. Having been called to the Bar on May 13,
1959 Jayasinghe commenced his long legal career prominently by being
retained by the defence in the Bandaranaike Assassination Case within
months of his taking oaths as a lawyer.
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Kirthisiri Jayasinghe |
However having been actively associated in this Case right up to the
then available Privy Council Jayasinghe accepted the appointment as Sri
Lanka’s first Registrar of Patents and Trade Marks at the request of the
then Minister of Trade and Shipping, Lalith Athulathmudali, which post
he held with distinction till retirement in 1992 and reverting to the
Metropolitan Bar.
An expert in Intellectual Property Law and Administration Jayasinghe
first received his training in his speciality at the United Nations
specialised agency, the Geneva based World Intellectual Property
Organisation (WIPO), and at the State Committee for Inventions and
Discoveries in Moscow and thereafter had specialised training in Sweden,
France, Japan, Australia and India.
He has represented Sri Lanka at many international conferences on his
subject including those held under the auspices of the United Nations in
Manila, Geneva, Bangkok, New Delhi, Seoul, Tokyo, Stockholm, Dhaka and
Colombo.
In 1989, Jayasinghe represented Sri Lanka at a Diplomatic Conference
in Washington for the conclusion of an International Treaty for the
Protection of Integrated Circuits and later that year at a Diplomatic
Conference at the Hague attended by 92 countries for the drafting of a
Treaty harmonizing the Patent Laws of the world. In 1987, Jayasinghe
headed a United Nations team on Intellectual Property visiting five
Asian and three Western countries in the task of evaluating the
Intellectual Property situation in the Asian-Pacific Region and
formulated new projects for this region which benefitted 31 countries in
the region in the field of Intellectual Property.
Kirthisiri Jayasinghe is an old boy of S. Thomas’ College, Mount
Lavinia. |
