President Obama nominates Danny Marti as new 'piracy czar'

Danny Marti, a copyright and trademark attorney in Washignton, has been nominated as the new White House intellectual property enforcement coordinator, a position dubbed "piracy czar" because of its mission to tackle infringement.

It has been more than a year since Victoria Espinel stepped down from the post, a vacancy that has frustrated industry lobbyists as Espinel had played a role in bringing divergent parties to the table to hash out voluntary agreements on fighting piracy.

The position was established as part of anti-piracy legislation passed in 2008. A requirement is that the IP coordinator be part of the White House staff. The position is part of the Office of Management and Budget.

Marti is managing partner of Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton's Washington, D.C. office. According tothe firm's website, Marti has represented brands such as Tory Burch, Adidas and American Eagle Outfitters in trademark litigation.

His nomination faces Senate confirmation.

According to a profile in Washington Business Journal, Marti was born in Washington, went to Georgetown as an undergraduate and got a law degree at Emory University Law School. He has been a legal adviser to the Gorilla Foundation, and served on the Miami-Dade Community Relations Board before he moved back to D.C. in 2001. He has represented all sides in trademark cases, and Silicon Valley firms on their brand protection, according to industry sources.

Mitch Glazier, senior executive vice president of the Recording Industry Assn. of America, said that the position was "an increasingly important job on behalf of the millions of workers who comprise the country's $1 trillion copyright economy." He added, "We thank the Administration for moving to fill this significant post and we hope for speedy confirmation. We look forward to working with Mr. Marti to help foster the genius of America's creative community."

MPAA CEO Chris Dodd said, "Danny's impressive record of commitment to enforcing IP rights in the Internet age makes him a particularly strong choice. We urge the Senate to confirm him without delay for this important job."

(C) 2014 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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Chinese e-commerce rivals challenge Alibaba

BEIJING — China's biggest property developer, Wanda Group, and Internet giants Baidu and Tencent unveiled a new e-commerce venture Friday in a challenge to industry leader Alibaba Group ahead of its U.S. stock offering.

The three companies said they will integrate online and offline selling, with e-commerce services in Wanda's 107 shopping malls, as well as its hotels and resorts. They said they would invest 5 billion yuan ($814 million) to start.

The venture adds to competition for Alibaba, whose Taobao, Tmall and other platforms account for some 80 percent of Chinese online commerce. The company is preparing for a U.S. initial public offering that analysts say might value it between $150 billion and $200 billion.

The new venture will develop services including online finance, the owners said. That could pose a challenge to Alibaba's popular banking service, Yu'ebao.

China is the world's most populous Internet market, with more than 600 million people online. The consulting firm McKinsey has said online shopping might triple from 2011 levels to $400 billion a year by 2015.

Wanda will own 70 percent of the new venture, the Wanda E-Commerce Co.

Baidu Inc., operator of China's most popular search engine, and Tencent Holdings Ltd., which operates games and the popular WeChat instant message service, each will hold 15 percent.

The development of such online-to-offline, or O2O, models is "an inevitable trend" in e-commerce, said the CEO of Wanda E-Commerce, Dong Ce, in a statement. He said the joint resources of the three owners should make the company the biggest of its kind.

Tencent also owns a stake in JD.com, China's second-largest e-commerce company. Tencent has launched ventures to integrate e-commerce and online finance services with WeChat, which it says has more than 400 million active users.

Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent are increasingly intruding into each other's core businesses. They have spent more than $7 billion since the start of 2013 to acquire or launch e-commerce, entertainment and other ventures.

The companies are trying to become one-stop services for Web surfers who increasingly go online using smartphones and want more convenience, industry analysts say.

Wanda said it estimates its shopping malls and other outlets will attract 5 billion customers a year by 2020, making the company the "world's largest offline commerce platform."

Dong said the company expects to sign up 40 million e-commerce users this year and increase the total to 100 million by next year.

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The Ticker

Registry to hold plate
lottery in new branch

MassDOT Registrar of Motor Vehicles Celia J. Blue announced the annual low number license plate lottery drawing will be held on Sept. 10 from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the RMV's soon-to-open branch at 136 Blackstone St. in Boston. The number "351" is included in the drawing this year; it is the number of cities and towns within the commonwealth.

The new branch space features a dedicated E-ZPass Service Customer Center, enhanced privacy during customer transactions and hearings, and consolidated licensing and registration counters.

The Boston Public Market is to be located on the first floor and the RMV will occupy the second and third floors.

Abercrombie's logos coming off

The Abercrombie & Fitch logo has lost the power it once wielded.

Shares of Abercrombie & Fitch Co. tumbled yesterday after reporting weak sales as more teens shop elsewhere. The New Albany, Ohio-based retailer reported that revenue fell 5.8 percent to $890.6 million, short of analyst estimates. Revenue at stores open at least a year dropped a steep 11 percent, including 
8 percent at U.S. stores.

The company is trying to stock trendier clothing — and it turns out that means stripping off the once-prized Abercrombie logo.

It is a major change for the retailer, whose sweatshirts and T-shirts emblazoned with its name long held major cachet with teenagers. Now, individuality is the name of the game.

U.S. economy grew at 4.2 percent rate

After a bleak start to the year, the U.S. economy grew at a brisk annual rate of 4.2 percent in the April-June quarter, the government said yesterday, slightly faster than it had first estimated.

The upward revision supported expectations that the second half of 2014 will prove far stronger than the first half.

Today

L Commerce Department releases personal income and spending for July.

L Biogen Idec announced that Donald R. Johns, M.D., has joined the company as vice president, leading Biogen Idec's amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) Innovation Hub (ALS iHub). The ALS iHub is a new, cohesive unit dedicated to accelerating the discovery and development of novel therapies for ALS by integrating research with clinical development. Johns has spent more than 30 years researching and developing medicines for patients with neurodegenerative diseases. He has contributed to several successful new drug applications and has 14 patents in his name that are either issued or pending.

Do you have a new hire or promotion to announce? Send items with photos for The Shuffle to bizsmart@bostonherald.com.

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Massachusetts to offer two-month tax amnesty

BOSTON — The Massachusetts Department of Revenue has announced a two-month amnesty program designed to encourage the payment of delinquent taxes by individuals and businesses.

The amnesty program will run from Sept. 1 through Oct. 31. It applies to unpaid taxes billed on or before July 1.

About 300,000 taxpayers will receive a notice next month notifying them that they qualify for the tax amnesty program.

The notices will tell taxpayers how much they owe. Revenue officials will waive all penalties if the balance is paid in full by the end of October.

The tax amnesty program was approved by state lawmakers and included in the fiscal year 2015 budget signed by Gov. Deval Patrick in July.

Officials say the program is a good way to encourage delinquent taxpayers to pay up and avoid fines.

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After Twitch, is Ustream the next billion-dollar target?

The $970 million in cash Amazon is paying to purchase Twitch isn't just good news for the founders of the company that live-streams people playing videogames. Another player that's quietly operated in the wings, Ustream, could now also benefit and find itself the next billion-dollar takeover target.

Ustream certainly has roots entrenched in Hollywood that makes it attractive to the industry's largest entertainment conglomerates.

The San Francisco-based company has live-streamed red-carpet premieres and other events for "The Hunger Games," "Twilight," "Neighbors," "Game of Thrones" and "Pretty Little Liars" for Lionsgate, Universal, HBO and ABC Family. Other clients include TMZ, Showtime, Discovery, and the UFC, which has tested pay-per-view events.

Ustream's technology also is embedded inside Sony's PlayStation 4, enabling gamers to upload what they're playing at the press of a button.

Ustream admits it's recently had prospective buyers kick the tires of the privately owned company.

"We have seen a definite uptick in M&A inquiries in the past few months -- likely driven by the Twitch conversation, rising awareness surrounding streaming video, and our surging enterprise video business, which now accounts for approximately one-third of all live business video," Ustream CEO Brad Hunstable told Variety. "We are going to wait before taking any offers. Live video was previously expected to triple in the next three years, and now we think that might be a conservative estimate."

And that doesn't come as much of a surprise to analysts.

"Over time, Ustream will be a highly desirable acquisition candidate, but the marketplace has to develop a full appreciation for what a volume distributor of live streaming video content can do," said Steve Vonder Haar, a senior analyst of enterprise webcasting and streaming at Wainhouse Research told Variety.

He also notes that "live video delivered in a streaming environment is not a technically easy thing to do at scale. Ustream is focusing on creating a hosted solution that does just that."

But what could make Ustream even more appealing to potential buyers is the fact it's focused on more than just Hollywood. The company was responsible for streaming a third of all live business video last year and is used by Facebook, LinkedIn, Intuit, NASA and Salesforce.

Those kinds of clients, however, should raise questions whether Ustream is right for Warner Bros., Disney, Sony, DreamWorks Animation, even Legendary Entertainment and Relativity Media, which are increasing their investments in digital ventures.

What those companies are buying, however, are ventures like Maker Studios, AwesomenessTV, Nerdist and Geek & Sundry -- companies with connections to talent making content watched by a young audience.

Ustream is more of a distributor, whose technology could attract the deep pockets of Google.

Amazon's acquisition of Twitch signaled that there's a lot of value in the live streaming of entertainment programming online -- not a surprise given that live broadcasts are also significant ratings generators on broadcast television.

Yet while Twitch spent all of its resources turning itself into a popular brand with gamers, Ustream has focused on finding a far larger audience -- usually more than 80 million viewers in a month, far more than the 50 million gamers that logged onto Twitch in July -- namely clients looking to get the word out about a product or service whether it's to their consumers at trade shows or employees through internal presentations.

But as it does mature, that will only increase the value of the companies that appear to be at the forefront.

In addition to Ustream, there's Newtek Tricaster, Livestream, Monetize Media, Bit TV, Streamup, BlogTV and Kyte.

There also is Major League Gaming, which like Twitch, live streams videogame competitions and events.

Ustream has raised around $60 million to date from investors that include SoftBank and DCM, its primary investors.

Why Ustream hasn't yet been acquired also doesn't surprise observers.

"It's early days in the streaming technology sector," said Vonder Haar, noting how YouTube is only a decade old. "This is really going to fundamentally change traditional media and video enriched business communications. Change that important takes a long time to evolve."

(C) 2014 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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New interim Suffolk University prez wants to grow endowment

The interim president of Suffolk University yesterday said one of his goals will be to grow the school's endowment so that more financially strapped students can attend.

Norman R. Smith, whose unanimous appointment yesterday by the Board of Trustees takes effect Monday, told the Herald he hopes to establish a major donor-cultivation program so that Suffolk's endowment, like Harvard's, will one day be large enough to enable the university to admit qualified students, regardless of their ability to pay.

"A lot of students just can't afford private colleges," Smith said, adding that what Harvard does "is wonderful, but you have to have a large endowment to do that. It's not something I can do in a year. But Suffolk is lucky to be in one of the most exciting cities in the world, and there's wealth here."

Smith, formerly the president of Dowling College in New York and a member of the inaugural management team at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1984, said he also hopes to raise Suffolk's visibility.

"I want to raise awareness of the progress Suffolk has made in becoming a substantial, multi-facted university," he said. "I don't think a lot of people beyond Suffolk realize that."

Smith comes to the school widely praised for his turnaround of Wagner College, which Suffolk called "one of the greatest college transformations in the history of American higher education."

Andrew Meyer, chairman of the board of trustees, called Smith an "outstanding leader with a proven record of success at helping universities reach their potential."

Smith will replace James McCarthy, who is leaving "to pursue consulting and business opportunities," the school said.

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Asian stocks post cautious gains, Qantas surges

TOKYO — Asian stock markets were mostly higher Thursday but gains were muted ahead of U.S. economic data and possible policy announcements from Japan.

KEEPING SCORE: The Nikkei 225, the benchmark for the Tokyo Stock Exchange, inched down 0.5 percent to 15,450.42. Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 0.2 percent to 24,965.42. and South Korea's Kospi rose 0.3 percent to 2,080.43 Sydney's S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.5 percent to 5,626.30. Markets in India, Singapore and Indonesia rose.

US OUTLOOK: Revised data on U.S. economic growth for the April-June quarter is scheduled to be released later Thursday. But markets are more interested in employment data due for release the following week.

ANALYST TAKE: Hideyuki Ishiguro, strategist with Okasan Securities Co. in Tokyo, said action was muted in the absence of market-moving news, and players awaited the release of U.S. employment data next week. "Players are also waiting for signs on how long the weak yen might last," he said on NTV news. A weak yen is a plus for Japan's exporters because it raises the value of their overseas earnings.

JAPAN POLITICS: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected to announce his new Cabinet ministers next week, which could signal what's in store for his so-called "Abenomics" policies that have helped Japan's economic revival and stock prices. The policies are believed to have helped the yen weaken and prices to rise in Japan, curbing the negative spiral of deflation.

QANTAS FLIES: Qantas Airways surged 7 percent in Sydney despite reporting a record loss that stemmed from tough domestic competition, a struggling long-haul business and a massive writedown of the value of its fleet. Investors welcomed confirmation it would separate its domestic and troubled international businesses, possibly attracting new investors to the long-haul operation.

WALL STREET: The Standard & Poor's 500 eked out a gain of one-tenth of a point, enough to set another all-time high. The index closed at 2,000.12 points, a day after its first close above 2,000. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 15 points, or 0.1 percent, to 17,122. The Nasdaq composite edged down a point to 4,569. Trading was quiet ahead of the Labor Day holiday weekend in the U.S.

ENERGY, CURRENCIES: Benchmark U.S. crude for October delivery was down 10 cents at $93.78 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The euro rose to $1.3215 from $1.3192 late Wednesday. The dollar dropped to 103.77 yen from 103.91 yen.

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Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

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China's Alibaba sees profits rise steeply

HONG KONG -- Profits at Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, tripled in the most recent quarter.

In a regulatory filing in the U.S., where the company expects to launch its IPO next month, Alibaba said that profits in the second quarter, the three months to end of June, were RMB12.3 billion ($2 billion). That compared with RMB4.3 billion ($700 million) in the same period last year.

The company recorded sharp growth in the use of mobile with monthly active mobile users reaching 188 million and the proportion of transactions handled (gross merchandise volume) conducted via mobile devices up to 30% from 12% a year ago.

Alibaba, which has amassed substantial media and entertainment assets in the past year, is expected to launch a roadshow for U.S. investors in the first week of September and launch the IPO shortly thereafter. Stock could be trading in ADR form by middle of the month.

Analysts have suggested that it may raise $20 billion from the share sale and that the company could be valued at $150 billion at the time of the sale.

(C) 2014 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
 

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US economy grew at brisk 4.2 pct. rate in Q2

WASHINGTON — After a bleak start to the year, the U.S. economy grew at a brisk annual rate of 4.2 percent in the April-June quarter, the government said Thursday, slightly faster than it had first estimated.

The upward revision supported expectations that the second half of 2014 will prove far stronger than the first half.

The Commerce Department's second estimate of growth for last quarter followed its initial estimate of 4 percent. The upward revision reflected stronger business investment in new equipment and structures than first thought.

The seasonally adjusted 4.2 percent annual growth rate for the gross domestic product — the nation's total output of goods and services — came after the economy had shrunk at an annual rate of 2.1 percent in the January-March quarter. That was the biggest economic decline since the depths of the Great Recession.

The first-quarter decline had reflected mainly the effects of a harsh winter that kept consumers away from shopping malls, disrupted factory production and depressed the economy.

In its second estimate of growth for the April-June quarter, the government said companies' restocking of supplies contributed less than it had first estimated. But a higher trade deficit subtracted less from growth than initially estimated.

The downward revision in inventory building will likely help boost growth in the current July-September quarter because it means that businesses may need to restock their supplies to meet demand.

With the wild swing between the first quarter's sharp slump and the vigorous rebound in the second quarter, annual economic growth has averaged a meager 1.1 percent for the first six months of this year. Still, most analysts think the economy has regained momentum as the job market has strengthened. They foresee a healthy annual growth rate of around 3 percent in the current quarter and in the final three months of the year.

Because of the rocky start, economists think growth for all of 2014 will average just 2.1 percent, little changed from last year's 2.2 percent increase.

They're more optimistic about 2015. Many expect growth to accelerate to 3 percent, an indication that the economy is finally gaining cruising speed after the deep 2007-2009 recession, the worst since the 1930s. The recession officially ended in June 2009 and over the past five years, the economy has turned in subpar growth rates averaging around 2 percent a year.

"I am looking for 2015 to be a better year, assuming geopolitics don't get in the way," said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University, Channel Islands. Economists worry that any of several political hotspots, from Ukraine to Israel to Iraq, could erupt in a way that would destabilize U.S. and global growth.

But Sohn said numerous factors should support growth in the second half of this year and in 2015. The principal strength is expected to come from further improvement in the job market.

In July, employers added 209,000 jobs, the sixth straight month of solid 200,000-plus job growth. Those gains have averaged 244,000 a month since February, the best six-month string in eight years.

Economists also foresee the unemployment rate, now a nearly normal 6.2 percent, going even lower. An improving job market means rising household incomes, higher consumer confidence and more consumer spending. That is critical to growth because consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of economic growth.

Besides more jobs translating into more spending power, economists think other forces, such as business investment, stronger state and local finances and rising exports, will also support growth in coming months.

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Applications for US unemployment aid slip to 298K

WASHINGTON — The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits slipped 1,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 298,000, a low level that signals employers are cutting few jobs and hiring is likely to remain strong.

The four-week average, a less volatile measure, dropped to 299,750, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's just 6,000 higher than four weeks ago, when the average fell to the lowest level in more than eight years.

"The downward trend ... is now clear and strong," said Ian Shepherdson, an economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. Shepherdson forecasts that employers added 250,000 jobs this month.

Applications are a proxy for layoffs. When employers hold onto their workers, it suggests they are more confident in the economy and could step up hiring.

The applications data is the latest sign that the job market is steadily healing. Employers have added an average of 230,000 jobs a month this year, up from an average of 195,000 in 2013. Average job gains since February have been the best in eight years.

The unemployment rate ticked up to 6.2 percent in July from 6.1 percent in June. But that was because more Americans began looking for work. Most didn't immediately find jobs, but the rising number of job seekers suggests that people are growing more confident about their prospects.

And employers in June advertised the most monthly job openings in more than 13 years, the government said earlier this month.

A total of 2.5 million people received benefits in the week ending Aug. 16, the latest data available, up 25,000 from the previous week. But that figure has fallen from nearly 3 million a year ago.

Rising optimism about jobs and hiring helped boost consumer confidence to nearly a seven-year high in August, the Conference Board, a research group, said earlier this week.

The percentage of respondents who said jobs were "plentiful" rose to 18.2 percent from 15.6 percent in July. That's the highest level since 2008. Consumer perceptions generally track the unemployment rate over time.

But hiring has yet to boost wages by much. Wage growth has barely outpaced inflation since the recession ended more than five years ago. Still, more people with jobs means more paychecks, which could drive consumer spending and growth.

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