The US has once again called for concerted international actions to thwart the further escalation of intellectual piracy and counterfeiting. Jennifer Groves, general manager of United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and representative of the trade executive office of the President of the United States, recently stressed at a gathering here in preparation for the First Arab Consumer and Brand Protection Forum to be held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on Oct. 19-21, the importance of coordinated international efforts to intensify penalties and procedures to prevent this phenomenon, which affected all countries in the world. She presented a lecture in which she shared the US experience in combating commercial fraud and counterfeiting, which is aimed at learning from the best practices, and adopting successful techniques and methods that have contributed significantly to reducing the percentage of commercial fraud and piracy in the US. Engineer Saudi Al-Askar, acting secretary-general of Gulf Standardization Organization (GSO), sharing the GSO experience and its vision in the field of standardization, said “establishing the necessary infrastructure is the basic pillar for the protection of customers and building up their confidence products and exports coming from the Gulf.” He added that GSO established a unified standardization system for the GCC, and started to set up centers to provide accreditation services that will help enhance the credibility of Gulf systems. __
