Parallel imports: the never-ending saga on repackaging and use of trade marks may finally be ending ... and not before time

In an Opinion by the Advocate General, several ghosts finallyhave been put to rest in a ferocious 30-year jockeying for positionbetween brand owners and European importers over the abilityof importers to replace existing brand owner trade marks withthe importer's own brand names (ie repackaging) for purposesof the European market harmonization.     

Community service: its use in criminal justice

Community service has been perceived as a desirable alternative to the use of short-term imprisonment as a response to increasing crime rates. Although heavily used in Western Europe and the Old Commonwealth, its adoption in the United States has been localized and patchy. Use in Asia, South America, and Africa is limited. This article reviews the use of community service in selected countries around the world. It concludes that community service can be used as a pretrial diversion, as a condition of probation or parole, or as an option to work off a fine by an impoverished offender. Very often, it is itself a stand-alone sentence, but it can also be used in addition to other sentences. Some countries give community service a secure place in the sentencing tariff, whether as retributively oriented "hard end" penalties or as rehabilitative and/or restorative endeavors. Others leave usage, within broad qualification criteria, to the discretion of sentencers.     

The evolution of a campaign: tracking press coverage and party press releases through the 2001 UK General Election

• This paper builds upon a content analysis of all news articles that appeared in six national daily newspapers and of all national press releases issued by the three main political parties during the UK General Election 2001 campaign. The results were compared with data from two opinion polls conducted at the start and at the end of the campaign. Here, using the same basic data, we track the coverage of issues in party press releases and daily newspapers on a weekly basis to determine how the parties' priorities and press coverage evolved.
• The results show that the Labour and Liberal Democrat campaign strategies, in terms of relative issue priorities, did not change during the campaign. However, the Conservatives shifted their attention to the public priorities of Health and Education towards the end of the campaign. There is evidence that the Conservative emphasis on Europe and taxation earlier in the campaign may have influenced the volume of press coverage but did not appear to have affected relative party standings. The implications of these results for political marketers are considered.

Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

If It Doesn't Fit,Throw Out the Old Pair and Get a New One

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique -