Trademark Vigilance in the Twenty-First Century: An Update

The trademark laws impose a duty upon brand owners to be vigilant in policing their marks, lest they be subject to the defense of laches, a reduced scope of protection, or even death by genericide. Before the millennium, it was relatively manageable for brand owners to police the retail marketplace for infringements and counterfeits. The Internet changed everything. In ways unforeseen, the Internet has unleashed a tremendously damaging cataclysm upon brands—online counterfeiting. It has created a virtual pipeline directly from factories in China to the American consumer shopping from home or work. The very online platforms that make Internet shopping so convenient, and that have enabled brands to expand their sales, have exposed buyers to unwittingly purchasing fake goods which can jeopardize their health and safety as well as brand reputation. This Article updates a 1999 panel discussion titled Trademark Vigilance in the Twenty-First Century, held at Fordham Law School, and explains all the ways in which vigilance has changed since the Internet has become an inescapable feature of everyday life. It provides trademark owners with a road map for monitoring brand abuse online and solutions for taking action against infringers, counterfeiters and others who threaten to undermine brand value

Ecommerce in Pakistan: Challenges & Opportunities

Ecommerce has been promoted across the globe as one of the key enablers for youth entrepreneurship and employment. Despite a favorable internet and mobile demographics and increasing ecommerce adoption, Pakistan’s ecommerce market size remains tiny compared to other similar countries. As part of a larger study aiming to explore the challenges and opportunities in Pakistani ecommerce, we conducted a qualitative study with 10 e-entrepreneurs to explore the factors hindering ecommerce growth in Pakistan. We identify that along with the challenges related to customer, payments and logistics; the absence of institutions and trade bodies to support and promote ecommerce, are hindering explosive ecommerce growth in Pakistan. We suggest that development of a rational ecommerce policy based on field data and ground realities; and effective implementation of such policy has a pivotal role in providing the enabling environment for ecommerce growth. Therefore, we propose an in depth inquiry into the nature and size of ecommerce market in Pakistan, based on which ecommerce policy guidelines will be developed for ecommerce growth in Pakistan. Should an enabling environment be provided for ecommerce growth in Pakistan, a huge opportunity for youth and female entrepreneurship and employment can be created

Dirichlet belief networks for topic structure learning

Recently, considerable research effort has been devoted to developing deep architectures for topic models to learn topic structures. Although several deep models have been proposed to learn better topic proportions of documents, how to leverage the benefits of deep structures for learning word distributions of topics has not yet been rigorously studied. Here we propose a new multi-layer generative process on word distributions of topics, where each layer consists of a set of topics and each topic is drawn from a mixture of the topics of the layer above. As the topics in all layers can be directly interpreted by words, the proposed model is able to discover interpretable topic hierarchies. As a self-contained module, our model can be flexibly adapted to different kinds of topic models to improve their modelling accuracy and interpretability. Extensive experiments on text corpora demonstrate the advantages of the proposed model.Comment: accepted in NIPS 201

The Impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) on E-commerce and Customer Spending Pattern in South Korea – e-Market Trends, Forecasts and Statistics

Coronavirus (COVID-19) has caused a lot of disarray in all sectors across the world. Businesses have been significantly affected by the spread of the virus. Manufacturing, tours and travel, education, among other have been profoundly affected. A lot of strain has been exerted on most multinational operations. The pandemic has impacted retail trading. The need for e-trading and e-commerce has significantly increased because they promote distribution of products with minimal contact between the sellers and the buyers. This paper looks at how international trade has been impacted through addressing methods that have been employed to ensure that countries such as China and South Korea have managed to carry out their manufacturing processes and exportation. The paper explores the available literature regarding the purchasing behavior of prospective customers during the COVID-19 period. Data has been collected in different parts of the world to get facts about the impact of the pandemic. Market trends and future statistics forecasts have been provided. The research has also given possible recommendations that can be adopted by the World Health Organization and all the nations of the world to help in containing the COVID-19 and bring back sanity across the globe.  Keywords:COVID-19,E-commerce,Spending Pattern;South-Korea;e-MarketTrendDOI: 10.7176/JMCR/69-03Publication date:July 31st 202

India and the multilateral trading system after Seattle - toward a proactive role

The authors argue that India should engage more actively in the multilateral trading system for four reasons: First, such engagement could facilitate domestic reform, and improve access to export markets. If the government could show that domestic reform would pay off with increased access to markets abroad, those who gain from such access - whether they export textiles, software, professional services, or other products - could represent a countervailing voice to reform's opponents. In turn, the need for this external payoff to secure domestic reform makes India a credible bargainer, which could induce trading partners, to open their markets to India. Second, external commitments can foster good domestic policies, by providing guarantees against the reversal of current policies, or lending credibility to promises of future reform. Such pre-commitments could help strike a balance between the reluctance to unleash competition immediately, and the desire not to be held perpetual hostage to vested interests, or weak domestic industries. Third, engagement can help enforce India's market access rights. If other countries do not eliminate quotas on textiles, and clothing as scheduled, India can credibly threaten to withdraw its obligations under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs). Fourth, multilateral tariff reduction could reduce the disadvantage (to India) of not being part of regional agreements. The value of multilateral engagement might be limited, if the prospects for securing increased market access are dim, as the failed Seattle negotiations might appear to suggest. India must credibly test negotiating pessimism by showing its willingness to open its markets in return for improved access to foreign markets. Success is not certain, but India's chances are improved if aligns itself with countries pressing for sound policies of open trade.Environmental Economics&Policies,Labor Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Rules of Origin,ICT Policy and Strategies,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Trade and Regional Integration,ICT Policy and Strategies

Diffusion and Impacts of E-Commerce in the United States of America: Results from an Industry Survey

The paper provides baseline conditions of U.S. e-commerce in the post-dot.com era. The article examines the key factors that act as determinants of e-commerce diffusion. It is based on qualitative analysis of U.S. industry survey data, matched to a similar data and analyses from other countries. It presents data taken from one of the most comprehensive sample surveys of U.S. firm activity in e-commerce. The paper analyzes differences among three industry sectors, and between small/medium and large firms using both qualitative interpretations and direct observations from the survey data, as well as use of structural equation modeling of e-commerce diffusion and impacts. Some differences in e-commerce orientation and experience were found across the three industry sectors studied in the survey. These differences are related largely to the nature of the tasks done in the respective industries, and to prior industry-level investment and learning related to e-commerce. There were also differences found in e-commerce attitudes and experience between small/medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and large establishments. Only modest differences were found between U.S. and non-U.S. establishments. Quantitative analysis revealed significant regression relationships with their level of statistical significance. Results show that e-commerce adoption is path dependent (i.e., establishments follow earlier investment patterns), and that each industry\u27s market and institutional context play a significant role in adoption