Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, Melbourne Law School, 2010. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-261)

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 89-93) Also available in print.

The purpose of this research study is to explore whether consumers would be complicit in the purchase of counterfeit goods once becoming aware of the counterfeit industry being linked to terrorism. Counterfeit goods are defined as identical copies of authentic products and they are produced without the permission of the registered owner (Carpenter & Lear, 2011). Almost any product can be counterfeited from clothing, shoes, jewelry, handbags and even medicines. Counterfeit products are sold at a fraction of the cost of the authentic product. This study identifies the ‘why’ to consumer complicity to purchase the counterfeit items. There are legalities involved with the selling of the copied products, and this research identified the underlying connections to terrorism along with the damaging effects on the U.S. economy. This study examined the variables of consumer knowledge of counterfeits and link to terrorism and willingness to purchase counterfeit products.

Counterfeit products, particularly pharmaceuticals, electronic devices, and apparels, are widespread. They threaten consumer safety and cause huge economic losses to licit supply chain partners and governments. Although a number of traditional anti-counterfeiting technologies, such as holograms and chemical tags, are available to combat counterfeiting, they are vulnerable to imitation or being reused. Besides, these technologies are intended to protect individual items, rather than to safeguard an entire supply chain. As such, fake products may likely be injected into the supply chain to hurt end-consumers. Track-and-trace technology based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has recently emerged as a promising tool to combat counterfeiting, because of its automatic and non-line-of-sight capability to identify massive product items. By maintaining an electronic pedigree (e-pedigree) that records the transaction information of product items along the supply chain, this approach stands out for protecting the supply chain against infiltration, eliminating theft and fraud, facilitating recall of defective products, and supporting remote authentication. However, a number of technical and critical issues have yet to be solved for practical implementation of RFID-based track-and-trace anti-counterfeiting. These include generation of accurate initial product e-pedigree in fast moving manufacturing lines, precise e-pedigree updating in batch product distributing and receiving, and fast e- pedigree queries for remote and real-time product authentication from end-customers. Without fully addressing these issues, the accumulated product e-pedigree data would be untrustworthy, rendering any subsequent operations of track-and-trace and product authentication unreliable. This thesis investigates the crucial implementation issues in RFID-based track-and-trace anti-counterfeiting. It firstly presents an innovative track-and-trace anti-counterfeiting system, based on which a TDPS algorithm is proposed for generation of initial product e-pedigree in fast moving production lines. The TDPS overcomes many practical issues, such as tag writing error and tag locking failure, and helps identify the bottleneck of initial product e-pedigree generation. To tackle the bottleneck, the TDPS is further optimized by incorporating a block writing method to enhance the tag EPC writing efficiency and an integration method to balance the overhead of RFID equipment. In product distributing and receiving, a mechanized 3D scanning method is proposed to improve bulk item identification rate and enhance the accuracy and completeness of product e-pedigree. Indeed, RFID-based track-and-trace anti-counterfeiting mandates a relatively high bulk item identification rate for product authentication and e-pedigree updating. Experimental results demonstrate that the mechanized 3D scanning can achieve a bulk item reading rate of up to 98.9%, which largely outperforms the widely documented bulk reading rate (70%) in real applications. In retailing level, the efficiency of e-pedigree queries would hugely impact on customer shopping experience and the effectiveness of track-and-trace anti-counterfeiting. A partition-based method is therefore developed to cluster product e-pedigree data to improve the speed of e-pedigree queries. This approach partitions the accumulated e-pedigree data into fixed and dynamic groups, such that queries are conducted mainly on active data, rather than on the whole historical data sets. By addressing the above key issues, this thesis contributes to making implementation of RFID-based track-and-trace anti-counterfeiting practically viable and reliable. / published_or_final_version / Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 141-150). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

The production and distribution of counterfeit drugs is a critical health problem that plagues nations worldwide. The presence of counterfeit antimalarials has become especially worrying, as these drugs are most often needed by those living in nations whose resources to verify the medicine supply are lacking. Rapid analysis methods used for screening large quantities of poor quality antimalarials are critical in the battle to protect those in less developed regions of the world. Simple, cost effective analysis methods that can be used in the field must be developed so those whose governments cannot afford to maintain medicine regulatory agencies can still have faith in their medicinal supply. A very powerful screening method, Direct Analysis in Real Time Mass Spectrometry (DART-MS) has been used to investigate thousands of poor quality medicines. This method, however, is known to fragment molecules more readily than commonly used, 'softer' ionization methods, such as electrospray ionization. Excess fragmentation in 'harder' ionization sources is due to deposition of additional internal energy to the ionized molecules. This internal energy deposition can be measured, so the analyst can be knowledgeable as to what to expect when examining unknowns using this recently developed ionization source. Quantitation of the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) in pharmaceuticals is crucial to the determination of what class a poor quality medicine fits into. Because poor quality drugs can be of different types, it is important to accurately classify them, in hopes of improving the supply of medicines available to those in less developed regions of the world. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is most commonly used to quantify the active pharmaceutical ingredient in poor quality medicines, however, this method is time consuming, preventing its use in high throughput settings. During the course of my research, hundreds of poor quality pharmaceuticals were analyzed using DART-MS. The active pharmaceutical ingredient was detected during the rapid screening for many of these drugs, however, a more in depth analysis would often reveal less than the expected quantity of active ingredient. A rapid non-chromatographic quantitation method was developed using a mass spectrometer as the detector. This method allows for both quantitative and qualitative information regarding a specific sample to be obtained simultaneously, saving the analyst time and resources. Utilizing this non- chromatographic mass spectrometric method, degradation products have been identified, thus increasing our ability to classify drugs into their respective divisions.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Also available in print.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2008. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on August 12, 2009) Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2005. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: multiple therapeutic categories of medicines have been increasingly targeted for counterfeiting. According to Van Niekerk [Van Niekerk, Anton. (2001). Moral and social complexities of AIDS in Africa. University of Stellenbosch], “it is commonplace to identify and bewail a plethora of problems in the developing world generally, and in Africa in particular. Poverty, illiteracy, famine, political instability, natural disasters, and many more misfortunes dominate the history of this part of the world over the past 50 years. It was therefore adding uncalled (undeserved?) insult to already overwhelming injury when HIV/AIDS visibly struck the world since mid-1980. In spite of all the other calamities that Africa has to deal with, it nevertheless is no exaggeration to claim that HIV/AIDS nowadays constitutes the most serious health and social crisis and challenge that has ever befallen the continent”. Similar patterns involving HIV/AIDS are now emerging on other continents. One objective of this recent research study was to explore possible relationships between the growing scourges of the worldwide counterfeiting of medicines and parallels with the expanding global HIV/AIDS pandemic - as well as to examine potential relationships and risks associated with other diseases that have been observed to have ‘special associations’ with HIV and AIDS [e.g. sexually transmitted infections (STI’s), Tuberculosis (TB) and Malaria] - and possible impact on the “World of Work”. A second and important objective was to develop Recommendations for Workplace Programs. The information gathered has also been used to propose future studies regarding HIV/AIDS and counterfeiting. In the developing world, antibiotics and anti-parasitic medicines are included among the counterfeiters’ favorite targets. Strong parallels exist between locations where counterfeiting of medicines is taking place/product being distributed/sold and where HIV/AIDS is most prevalent and/or where the epidemic is expanding progressively. Counterfeiting of medicines used for treating HIV/AIDS raises the possibility of additional future complications developing in managing other global diseases such as Malaria and Tuberculosis, not to mention exacerbating the potential for developing resistance and encouraging mutation of the HI virus itself. It is also noteworthy that certain medical devices have also been found to be counterfeit. Global demographics and with particular reference to projected growth rates of populations of the developing world are of specific relevance to this subject of anticounterfeiting and medicines used for the treatment of HIV and AIDS. Indeed, next generations of humanity appear to be at unnecessary risk of being caught up in a confluence of forces whereby the practice of the counterfeiting of medicines could result in significant complications and unforeseen consequences regarding management of the global HIV/AIDS crisis. Following the research, recommendations for workplace programs were developed. The research study concludes with a comprehensive set of references. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die problamatiek aangaande die vervalsing (namaak) van medisyne word nou wereldwyd ervaar en het ‘n impak op beide die geindustrialiseerde en die ontwikkelende wereld. Menige medisyne in terapeutiese kategoriee is tot op hede as vervals geidentifeseer, met die direkte resultaat dat hulle ‘n minemale of geen terapeutiese uitwerking het nie. Wat nog erger is, is dat hierdie middels uiters gevaarlik is om te gebruik en selfs lewensgevaarlik kan wees. Dit is van groot betekenis dat ook medisyne wat bestem is om persone met HIV/VIGS te behandel, as vervals aangetoon is – en soedoende tot nog toe onbekende gevolge vir pasiente, die werkomgewing en ongekende risiko’s vir wereldwye gesondheidsorg en internasionale veiligheid en sekuriteit inhou. In hierdie studie word die onderwerp in taamlike besonderhede bestudeer en daar word afgesluit met aanbevelings oor programme in die werkplek wat ontwerp is om sorg en ondersteuning te bied aan werkers met HIV/VIGS. Verdere studie word ook aanbeveel om die tergende probleme wat volg op die vervalsing van medisyne in die behandling van persone met HIV/VIGS, en die implikasies hiervan, die hoof te bide.