Posts Tagged: "online shopping"

Black Friday is one of the most important retail events of the year for brands and consumers alike. This sales event is particularly tempting for price-centric Millennials whose diverse buying habits put them at increased risk of falling for fakes. Representing one of the biggest Black Friday consumer segments, they are particularly vulnerable to counterfeiters. Last year alone, our data show that an estimated $482 million were lost on Black Friday from Millennials who unwittingly bought fakes online.

The unusual direction of innovative developments in the field of fintech is underscored by U.S. Patent No. 9953350, called Augmented Reality View of Product Instructions, which was issued to PayPal in late April. This patent protects a method by which an augmented reality view of an identified object is generated to include promotional material, recommendations, location to purchase the product and product instructions from a database correlated with the object. This technology enables the user’s ability to access information related to a product by creating an augmented reality in which users may be able to see product and service reviews and listings associated with buyers and sellers, recommendations, and product tutorials.

At issue in the trademark infringement suit is Amazon’s sale of counterfeit wheel center caps bearing distinctive Mercedes-Benz trademarks… Daimler argues that Amazon “facilitates the sale of an exorbitant number of counterfeit and infringing goods” through its platform, counterfeit activity which has increased since 2015 when the company began inducing Chinese manufacturers to list on its U.S. and European e-commerce platforms. Daimler notes that lawsuits over counterfeit products have been filed against Amazon by well-known consumer brands including a February 2017 suit filed by French luxury goods brand Chanel against the American e-commerce giant.

Virtual reality and augmented reality are catching on, and the fashion industry has taken notice. Many of today’s fashion brands are seeing their work being used in this disruptive technology. But, this has caused trademark issues for both fashion companies that want to protect their brands and fashion technology companies that want to bring those brands into the virtual reality world. Moira Lion and Jeff Greene, with the Intellectual Property Group at Fenwick & West, recently sat down with IPWatchdog to discuss how to approach VR innovations as they develop brand protection.

Fitfully has filed at least one patent application which has been published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) as W.O. Patent Application No. 2016051416, titled System and Method of 3D Modeling and Virtual Fitting of 3D Objects. It discloses a method of virtual fitting a foot with a shoe by obtaining 3D model data associated with a foot, obtaining data of a second 3D model associated with a shoe and aligning point clouds derived from the 3D models of the foot and shoe.

Some states have decided that they can’t wait for a federal response on the collection of online sales tax, prompting them to enact their own measures. In Utah, where less than one percent of taxpayers actually pay the use tax they owe the state for Internet retail transactions, some state lawmakers have collaborated on crafting a bill that would give the state more power in collecting sales tax from online retailers, with or without a physical presence within the state. In South Carolina, January 1st of this year brought about the end of a tax break offered to Amazon for building a distribution center in that state. The collection of sales tax from Amazon sales to South Carolina consumers is expected to bring in about $13.8 million in additional tax revenue through 2016, according to projected revenues released by South Carolina’s tax department. The distribution centers built by Amazon serve as the physical in-state nexus which requires it to collect sales tax from South Carolina consumers.

EMV utilizes a computer chip implanted into a card to interact with a card reader at the point-of-sale in retail establishments. The technology is much more secure than typical magnetic stripes as the chip encrypts financial payment data multiple times which communicating with a terminal. Financial services providers all over the world will be replacing magnetic stripe cards with EMV cards to prevent cyber attacks at terminals to stem the growing tide of cyber attacks which had been greatly hurting banks. Following up our recent EMV coverage we took a look at EMV related patents, finding that Mastercard has a dominant position in this field with 25 patents, almost a quarter of all patents related to EMV payments issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Following up behind Mastercard is Japan-based SMK Corporation and Intellectual Ventures Management of Bellevue, WA.

As card-present transactions become less susceptible to fraud because of the shift to EMV chip card technologies, it’s expected that more fraud will shift to online platforms where it’s still relatively easy to input fraudulent financial information without being noticed; some reports indicate that online retail fraud in the U.S. alone is expected to rise by 106 percent in three years after October’s EMV liability shift from banks to business owners. One way that businesses conducting sales online can get themselves ready to respond quickly to fraud is through effective planning prior to major sales events like Black Friday or, perhaps more important when thinking about e-commerce, Cyber Monday. If those workers handling fulfillment of online orders are more aware of expected sales projections, it will help them be more aware of clues that the business might be a target for fraud if actual sales figures differ wildly.

Retailers always top the list of seasonal and holiday hiring sprees but one of the largest employer of seasonal workers the past few years doesn’t own a single brick-and-mortar retail establishment. That would be e-commerce giant Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) of Seattle, WA. In 2014, the Internet retailer announced that it would hire 80,000 seasonal workers during last year’s holiday season. In 2015, Amazon has upped that number to 100,000 workers that it plans to employ on at least a temporary basis. This makes Amazon the single largest employer of seasonal workers during 2015, ahead of United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE:UPS) and its 95,000 holiday hires.

Amazon is continuing to develop some revolutionary innovations in the field of online retail shopping. Patent applications published recently by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office detail a bag delivery system for groceries and fragile items as well as an automated system for inhibiting fraudulent activities being attempted by members of an electronic marketplace. Other recent Amazon innovations include techniques for presenting information on a touchscreen so that it isn’t obscured by a user’s finger as well as an automated waste management system for workplaces.