Search Results (8)

The objective of this research is to examine the role of intellectual property (IP) in fostering business development, particularly focusing on patent management in Ecuador and its alignment with international standards. The study employs a comparative analysis of Ecuadorian legislation against the framework established by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to identify challenges and opportunities within the national IP system. Key methods include reviewing existing legal texts, interviewing stakeholders, and analyzing patent registration processes. The findings indicate that while Ecuador has made significant strides in harmonizing its IP laws with international treaties, such as the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), considerable barriers remain, particularly related to bureaucratic inefficiencies and a lack of technical resources in key institutions like the National Service of Intellectual Rights (SENADI). The conclusions highlight the need for enhanced efficiency and implementation of IP regulations to stimulate sustained innovation growth, attract national and foreign investments, and, ultimately, strengthen Ecuador’s competitiveness in a global economy. This research contributes to the understanding of how effective IP management can serve as a vital tool for economic development and innovation. Full article

Canada’s world-renowned banking sector is well- regulated, capitalized and one of the world’s most stable. It meets the essential pre-conditions for intellectual property (IP) finance methods such as a strong IP regime and a pool of firms with registered trademarks. In 2018 Canada launched its National IP Policy followed by certain IP finance initiatives led by the Canadian Business Development Bank (BDC) in 2019. However, it is not well understood how the Canadian Constitution structures economic relations. Certain longstanding federal and provincial issues remain to be addressed if trademark-backed finance is to become part of mainstream commercial lending in Canada. This article contributes to the nascent academic interdisciplinary trademark law and finance literature. An in-depth literature review highlights the existing gaps between the Canadian federal and provincial legal frameworks that govern security interests in trademarks, and market needs. The traditional legal research methodology evaluates the impact of relevant case law, public policies and law practice, adopting finance, economic and IP rights theory perspectives. A digital shared ledger system technology law solution is proposed to enhance registration of security interests with the aim of making trademark finance in Canada more effective and efficient. This article is foundational in the sense that it paves the way for recommendations for new policies with a view to normalising trademark-backed debt finance processes in Canada. Full article

The rise of digitalization, sensory devices, cloud computing and internet of things (IoT) technologies enables the design of novel digital product lifecycle management (DPLM) applications for use cases such as manufacturing and delivery of digital products. The verification of the accomplishment/violations of agreements defined in digital contracts is a key task in digital business transactions. However, this verification represents a challenge when validating both the integrity of digital product content and the transactions performed during multiple stages of the DPLM. This paper presents a traceability method for DPLM based on the integration of online and offline verification mechanisms based on blockchain and fingerprinting, respectively. A blockchain lifecycle registration model is used for organizations to register the exchange of digital products in the cloud with partners and/or consumers throughout the DPLM stages as well as to verify the accomplishment of agreements at each DPLM stage. The fingerprinting scheme is used for offline verification of digital product integrity and to register the DPLM logs within digital products, which is useful in either dispute or violation of agreements scenarios. We built a DPLM service prototype based on this method, which was implemented as a cloud computing service. A case study based on the DPLM of audios was conducted to evaluate this prototype. The experimental evaluation revealed the ability of this method to be applied to DPLM in real scenarios in an efficient manner. Full article

This study sought to identify the drivers of local government efficiency by investigating three key motivations: internal capacity, rewards for good performance, and compliance with the national government. This paper studied the business registration efficiency cases of 141 highly urbanized and component cities in the Philippines using the cities and municipalities competitiveness index dataset from 2017 to 2019. It was found that capacity-related factors are the most influential in motivating Philippine cities to be more efficient in their business registration processes. Having a higher institutional capacity, higher public service experiences, and good technology infrastructure contribute immensely to better service delivery. Compliance with the national government’s directions on public service standards also positively influences efficiency. In addition, it was confirmed that these factors may appear differently, depending on cities’ size statuses. Other policy implications and recommendations for future research are discussed. Full article

Tunnels play important roles in integrated transport infrastructure. A digital twin reproduces a real tunnel scene in virtual space and provides new means for tunnel digital maintenance. Aiming at the existing problems of video fragmentation, separation of video and business data, and lack of two- and three-dimensional linkage response methods in tunnel digital operation, in this paper, we propose a novel method for tunnel digital twin construction and virtual-real integration operation. Firstly, the digital management requirements of tunnel operations are systematically analyzed to clarify the purpose of digital twin construction. Secondly, BIM technology is used to construct a static model of the tunnel scene that conforms to the real tunnel main structure. Thirdly, a three-dimensional registration and projection calculation method is proposed to integrate tunnel surveillance video into a three-dimensional virtual scene in real time. Fourthly, multi-source sensing data are gathered and fused to form a digital twin scene that is basically the same as the real tunnel traffic operations scene. Finally, a management model suitable for digital twins is discussed to improve the efficiency of tunnel operations and management, and a tunnel in China is selected to verify this method. The results show that the proposed method is helpful to realize the application of two- and three-dimensional linkages of tunnel traffic smooth, accident rescue, facility management, and emergency response, and to improve the efficiency of tunnel digital management. Full article

Stockpile quantity monitoring is vital for agencies and businesses to maintain inventory of bulk material such as salt, sand, aggregate, lime, and many other materials commonly used in agriculture, highways, and industrial applications. Traditional approaches for volumetric assessment of bulk material stockpiles, e.g., truckload counting, are inaccurate and prone to cumulative errors over long time. Modern aerial and terrestrial remote sensing platforms equipped with camera and/or light detection and ranging (LiDAR) units have been increasingly popular for conducting high-fidelity geometric measurements. Current use of these sensing technologies for stockpile volume estimation is impacted by environmental conditions such as lack of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) signals, poor lighting, and/or featureless surfaces. This study addresses these limitations through a new mapping platform denoted as Stockpile Monitoring and Reporting Technology (SMART), which is designed and integrated as a time-efficient, cost-effective stockpile monitoring solution. The novel mapping framework is realized through camera and LiDAR data-fusion that facilitates stockpile volume estimation in challenging environmental conditions. LiDAR point clouds are derived through a sequence of data collections from different scans. In order to handle the sparse nature of the collected data at a given scan, an automated image-aided LiDAR coarse registration technique is developed followed by a new segmentation approach to derive features, which are used for fine registration. The resulting 3D point cloud is subsequently used for accurate volume estimation. Field surveys were conducted on stockpiles of varying size and shape complexity. Independent assessment of stockpile volume using terrestrial laser scanners (TLS) shows that the developed framework had close to 1% relative error. Full article

Invoice factoring is a handy tool for developing businesses that face liquidity problems. The main property that a factoring system needs to fulfill is to prevent an invoice from being factored twice. Distributed ledger technology is suitable for implementing the platform to register invoice factoring agreements and prevent double-factoring. Several works have been proposed to use this technology for invoice factoring. However, current proposals lack in one or several aspects, such as decentralization and security against corruption, protecting business and personally identifiable information (PII), providing non-repudiation for handling disputes, Know-Your-Customer (KYC) compliance, easy user on-boarding, and being cost-efficient. In this article, a factoring registration protocol is proposed for invoice factoring registration based on a public distributed ledger which adheres to the aforementioned requirements. We include a relayer in our architecture to address the entry barrier that the users have due to the need of managing cryptocurrencies for interacting with the public ledger. Moreover, we leverage the concept of Verifiable Credentials (VCs) for KYC compliance, and allow parties to implement their self-sovereign identities by using decentralized identifiers (DIDs). DIDs enable us to relay on the DIDComm protocol for asynchronous and secure off-chain communications. We analyze our protocol from several security aspects, compare it to the related work, and study a possible business use case. Our evaluations demonstrate that our proposal is secure and efficient, as well as covers requirements not addressed by existing related work. Full article

The importance of recycling end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) has been widely acknowledged as a means of reducing ELV waste to the environment. This reduced environmental waste contributes to achieving a number of UN SDGs, including the creation of sustainable cities. The recovery of secondary resources, such as metals, from the recycling of ELVs also reduces over-dependence on primary resources. This promotes efficient resource utilization and resource conservation. While recycling systems have been established and laws governing ELV recycling have been implemented in some developed countries, there are no such systems in much of the world, and regulations are few if any. To determine the challenges and opportunities for ELV recycling in developing countries, the literature on ELV recycling processes and activities was reviewed, and a SWOT analysis was done based on the data compiled from the literature, to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. From the SWOT analysis, the common features identified as opportunities were large market size, low labor cost, and the presence of recyclers of ELV parts. The common strengths were identified to be the vehicle registration system, vehicle manufacturing, ELV legislation, ELV recycling, and the waste management system. In the case of weaknesses, the identified features were the technological capacity, waste regulatory framework, vehicle deregistration, ELV regulatory framework, environmental impact and pollution, and the lack of access to information regarding ELVs, and ELV recycling infrastructure. The common threats were perceived as the little attention given to ELV recycling by the governing authorities, the difficulty of doing business, and political and social instability. The results of the SWOT analysis also showed that the opportunities were considerable and the threats were significant for all of the countries in this study. The weaknesses were significant in Nigeria and the other developing countries, and the strengths of the emerging economies tended to be greater. While weaknesses and threats were clearly identified by the SWOT analysis, the SWOT analysis also revealed the strengths and opportunities for recycling ELVs in developing and emerging countries. Full article