CRYPTO COPYCAT: A Fashion Centric Blockchain Framework for Eliminating Fashion Infringement

Authors: Magdi Elmessiry, Adel Elmessiry

Abstract:

The fashion industry represents a significant portion of the global gross domestic product, however, it is plagued by cheap imitators that infringe on the trademarks which destroys the fashion industry's hard work and investment. While eventually the copycats would be found and stopped, the damage has already been done, sales are missed and direct and indirect jobs are lost. The infringer thrives on two main facts: the time it takes to discover them and the lack of tracking technologies that can help the consumer distinguish them. Blockchain technology is a new emerging technology that provides a distributed encrypted immutable and fault resistant ledger. Blockchain presents a ripe technology to resolve the infringement epidemic facing the fashion industry. The significance of the study is that a new approach leveraging the state of the art blockchain technology coupled with artificial intelligence is used to create a framework addressing the fashion infringement problem. It transforms the current focus on legal enforcement, which is difficult at best, to consumer awareness that is far more effective. The framework, Crypto CopyCat, creates an immutable digital asset representing the actual product to empower the customer with a near real time query system. This combination emphasizes the consumer's awareness and appreciation of the product's authenticity, while provides real time feedback to the producer regarding the fake replicas. The main findings of this study are that implementing this approach can delay the fake product penetration of the original product market, thus allowing the original product the time to take advantage of the market. The shift in the fake adoption results in reduced returns, which impedes the copycat market and moves the emphasis to the original product innovation.

Keywords: Fashion, infringement, Blockchain, artificial intelligence, textiles supply.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1317406

References:

[1] The economic cost of ipr infringement in the clothing, footwear and accessories sector.
[2] The buying behavior of counterfeit fashion products in indian market (1999), http : / / www. dissertationhomework .com/ essays / fashion / the - buying-behaviour-of-counterfeit-fashion-products-in-indian-market.
[3] Adler, R.: System and method for modeling and analyzing strategic business decisions (Nov 14 2002), uS Patent App. 10/091, 859.
[4] Bloch, P.H., Bush, R.F., Campbell, L.: Consumer accomplices in product counterfeiting: a demand side investigation. Journal of consumer marketing 10(4), 27–36 (1993).
[5] Carroll, M.W.: One size does not fit all: A framework for tailoring intellectual property rights. Ohio St. LJ 70, 1361 (2009).
[6] Commuri, S.: The impact of counterfeiting on genuine-item consumers’ brand relationships. Journal of Marketing 73(3), 86–98 (2009).
[7] Crosby, M., Pattanayak, P., Verma, S., Kalyanaraman, V.: Blockchain technology: Beyond bitcoin. Applied Innovation 2, 6–10 (2016).
[8] Dubois, B., Duquesne, P.: The market for luxury goods: Income versus culture. European Journal of Marketing 27(1), 35–44 (1993).
[9] Eguchi, A.: Curtailing copycat couture: The merits of the innovative design protection and piracy prevention act and a licensing scheme for the fashion industry. Cornell L. Rev. 97, 131 (2011).
[10] Elavia, S.: How the lack of copyright protections for fashion designs affects innovation in the fashion industry (2014).
[11] ElMessiry, A. M., Gao, X., Singh, M. P.: Incorporating expectations as a basis for business service selection. In: International Conference on Service-Oriented Computing. pp. 486–500. Springer (2010).
[12] Gandino, F., Montrucchio, B., Rebaudengo, M., Sanchez, E.: Analysis of an rfid-based information system for tracking and tracing in an agri-food chain. In: RFID Eurasia, 2007 1st annual. pp. 1–6. IEEE (2007)
[13] Globe, S.: Zara clothing company supply chain (2018), http://blog. scmglobe.com/?page id=1513.
[14] Han, Y. J., Nunes, J. C., Dr`eze, X.: Signaling status with luxury goods: The role of brand prominence. Journal of Marketing 74(4), 15–30. (2010)
[15] Hemphill, C. S., Suk, J.: The law, culture, and economics of fashion. Stan. L. Rev. 61, 1147 (2008).
[16] Kapfunde, M.: Is blockchain technology set to revolutionize the fashion industry? (2016), http://fashnerd.com/2016/10/is- blockchaintechnology- set-to-revolutionize-the-fashion-industry/.
[17] La Ferla, R.: Faster fashion, cheaper chic. NY Times (May 10, 2007), http://www. nytimes. eom/2007/05/10/fashion/lOFOREVER. html (2007).
[18] Marcketti, S. B., Parsons, J. L.: Design piracy and self-regulation: the fashion originators’ guild of america, 1932-1941. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal 24(3), 214–228 (2006).
[19] Mukherjee, A.: Egyptian cotton, meet blockchain. Bloomberg (2016), https : / /www. bloomberg .com/ gadfly / articles / 2016 - 08 - 25 / egyptian - cotton-meet-blockchain.
[20] Point, T.: Managerial economics - overview (2018), https : / / www.tutorialspoint.com/managerial economics/managerial economics quick guide.htm.
[21] Priest, E.: Copyright and the harvard open access mandate. Nw. J. Tech. & Intell. Prop. 10, i (2011).
[22] Raustiala, K., Sprigman, C.: The piracy paradox: Innovation and intellectual property in fashion design. Virginia Law Review pp. 1687–1777 (2006).
[23] Rogaway, P., Shrimpton, T.: Cryptographic hash-function basics: Definitions, implications, and separations for preimage resistance, second-preimage resistance, and collision resistance. In: International workshop on fast software encryption. pp. 371–388. Springer (2004).
[24] Sadouskaya, K., et al.: Adoption of blockchain technologyin supply chain and logistics (2017).
[25] Shukla, P.: Impact of interpersonal influences, brand origin and brand image on luxury purchase intentions: Measuring interfunctional interactions and a cross-national comparison. Journal of world business 46(2), 242–252 (2011).
[26] Sproles, G. B.: Analyzing fashion life cycles: principles and perspectives. The Journal of Marketing pp. 116–124 (1981).
[27] Tapscott, D., Tapscott, A.: Blockchain revolution: how the technology behind bitcoin is changing money, business, and the world. Penguin (2016).
[28] Tom, G., Garibaldi, B., Zeng, Y., Pilcher, J.: Consumer demand for counterfeit goods. Psychology & Marketing 15(5), 405–421 (1998).
[29] Vangala, R. N.: Design of a dynamic quality control system for textile processes (2008).
[30] VeChain: Vechain development plan, https://cdn.vechain.com/vechain ico ideas of development en.pdf.
[31] Wang, J., Li, L., He, Q., Yu, X., Liu, Z.: Research on the application of block chain in supply chain finance. DEStech Transactions on Computer Science and Engineering (iceiti) (2017).
[32] Wenting, R.: Spinoff dynamics and the spatial formation of the fashion design industry, 1858–2005. Journal of Economic Geography 8(5), 593–614. (2008)
[33] Wright, A., De Filippi, P.: Decentralized blockchain technology and the rise of lex cryptographia (2015).