E-commerce has its numerous advantages. For instance, it overcomes geographical limitations to allow market expansion; decreases administrative, marketing and logistics costs; increases efficiency and provides a competitive environment to improve quality of service. However, there are some concerns that need to be addressed, particularly, privacy issues, legal issues such as copyright infringement, protection of patent rights, domain name disputes and preservation of trade secrets as well as issues pertaining to the validity and enforcement of agreements made online.
Governments and regulatory bodies throughout Asia have recognized the prospects of e-commerce and policies have been designed to amend the existing laws to deal with the emerging legal issues post by e-commerce transactions. To attract new online business opportunities and increase the competency of e-commerce in the Asian region, it is important for international businessmen and their legal advisors to be familiar with the e-commerce laws, policies and regulations throughout Asia.