News

Source: Amer Abdel Salam
February 18, 2009

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh is the vice-chair of the UN Global Compact Board since 2007, and chairman of the Afro-Asian Knowledge-Based Society Initiative (2009). Meeting him is quite an opportunity, even if the Baladna newspaper went out of its way to host him, as we believe that the reader has the right to know who owns the largest Intellectual Property (IP) company in the world.

The Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization is the Arab organization for capacity-building in the Arab region. What Abu-Ghazaleh says in this regard is “Everything that we do is in the field of developing Arab capacities, whether they are financial, accounting, Intellectual Property or IT related”. He described that the Arab region as a crawling child and adding that we should not compare ourselves with European and American nations. Also, we should not be unfair to ourselves by looking at the past, since the aforementioned nations controlled their own destinies since hundreds of years ago.

The beginning as Abu-Ghazaleh sees it was humble in 1972, where “with our own method, we established the first office in Kuwait, and then began with other branches of the Organization, and now we have 150 representative offices throughout the world, and the largest Intellectual Property company in the world. This is a source of pride for Arabs, and is indicative of the Arab capability to excel. We do not have a problem with the Westerners, and our history established the foundations of the civilizations of the world, which also supports us and integrates us into the future. We have a great people in their capabilities and competence. There are also leaders and rulers who provided us with the support and did not hold back in anything they could offer, because they realize that what we are doing is in the interest of the Arab economy and the interest of Arab nations.”

What is the secret of the interest in Intellectual Property protection?
Protection is required to encourage creativity, to develop a strong economy, and to move from a phase of receiving technology to that of developing it and inventing it. In the technically advanced world, the countries call for more strict IP enforcement IP locally, because this is the most stringent system in Western nations that encourages inventors to develop and invest.
The concept of IP has grown since 1971 over the years, and all Arab countries have laws and legislations that are equivalent to global laws and legislations in addition to those administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) which is responsible for property agreements.
Now there are IP laws that require development, and after legislation there is the issue of education, and executing the system. This requires training; namely training of judges and lawyers. We advise to allocate special chambers in courts for IP, and we’ve been able to convince many states to create such chambers.

What is the purpose behind the programs that the organization develops?
The objective is training all segments of society (lawyers, judges or officials in companies and governmental sectors). So the aim is developing the concept of IP, and encouraging the Arab citizens to invest in progress and innovation, such that the investors guarantee that they can utilize their investments commercially. So someone cannot spend 10 million dollars for example to develop a certain invention, if there is somebody who will steal it.

Development of the Syrian Law…
Syrian laws are compatible with international regulations, and this is the view of Abu-Ghazaleh. He says: “Through the Syrian judiciary, we were able to acquire our rights, which affirms the fact that legislative and legal infrastructure protects all right holders. We must realize that there is nothing called &l