Abu-Ghazaleh Intellectual Property (AGIP) is the first to bring the International Commons (iCommons) project to the Middle East.

Palo Alto, USA, and Amman, JORDAN – March 25, 2004 – Creative Commons, a non-profit corporation dedicated to building a body of creative works free for copying and re-use, announced today that it would expand its International Commons (iCommons) project in Jordan and the Middle East. AGIP, the leading provider of intellectual property services in the Arab region, will lead this effort.

Professor Lawrence Lessig, Chairman of Creative Commons and professor of law at Stanford University, in the U.S., said: “We’re very excited to have AGIP lead iCommons project in Jordan. AGIP’s participation is crucial to our growing effort in promoting the international cultural commons.”

Mr. Charles Shaban, executive director of AGIP’s Regional Office said, “We are very pleased to be the first Arab country to bring the International Commons to this region and we hope that this project will be a step forward towards building the digital commons in cyberspace.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Rami Olwan, an e-commerce legal consultant and project lead for iCommons in Jordan stated, “The international Creative Commons project is unique in the sense that it offers new concepts to the current copyright legal system.”

Announced in March 2003, iCommons is Creative Commons’ project to make its machine-readable copyright licenses useful worldwide. As the lead institution for Jordan, AGIP will coordinate a public effort to translate the Creative Commons licenses literally and legally for use there. Jordan joins Australia, Brazil, Catalonia, China, Croatia, Finland, France, Ireland, Japan, Spain, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom in this effort.

AGIP will field comments relating to their specific initiatives in archived email discussions on the Creative Commons website at:

https://creativecommons.org/discuss#/jordan

More about Creative Commons

A nonprofit corporation, Creative Commons promotes the creative re-use of intellectual works, whether owned or in the public domain. It is sustained by the generous support of The Center for the Public Domain, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Hewlett Foundation. Creative Commons is based at Stanford Law School (U.S.), where it shares staff, space, and inspiration with the school’s Center for Internet and Society.

For general information, visit https://creativecommons.org.

For more information about iCommons, see https://creativecommons.org/projects/international/.

More about AGIP

Abu-Ghazaleh Intellectual Property (AGIP) is a pioneering firm in intellectual property protection in the Arab world and today remains the region’s leader in this field. When AGIP was established in 1972 under the name TMP Agents, intellectual property protection was in its infancy in the Arab region. Legislation was weak and few foreign companies attempted to protect their intellectual property in the region.

The situation has changed dramatically over the last 3 decades and AGIP today is the largest IP firm in the Arab world, managing the protection of nearly half of the global Fortune 500 firms among many others. As Arab nations have developed, they have rapidly increased the legal protections applicable to intellectual property and have continued to work on increasing the effectiveness of enforcement of IP laws. AGIP has consistently been at the forefront of efforts to improve the infrastructure of Arab intellectual property protection.

It has always been the most generous Arab contributor to regional and global intellectual property associations and has worked in close coordination with Arab governments and multilateral governmental organizations such as WIPO to improve the climate for intellectual property protection.

Operating from its headquarters in Amman, Jordan, AGIP has offices in every major Arab city with liaison offices in Europe, UK, Canada and the USA.

For more information about AGIP, please visit:

http://www.agip.com

Contact

Christiane Asschenfeldt (Berlin, Germany)
iCommons Coordinator, Creative Commons
christiane@creativecommons.org

Rami Olwan (Ammam, Jordan)
Project Lead, iCommons Jordan
rolwan@tagi.com

Glenn Otis Brown (Palo Alto, USA)
Executive Director, Creative Commons
glenn@creativecommons.org