MANUFACTURING |
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Consumer is the king.
To buy or not to buy?
Counterfeiting is an extremely lucrative activity for criminal networks as the profits it generates are enormous and the risk of punishment is minimal. It has become a form of organised crime with its own experts specialising in production in the industrial sectors concerned, its own financiers, logistics experts, importers, wholesalers and distributors, right up to the end consumer
The dark side of globalisation
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Counterfeiters often use indirect routes when transporting their products in order to deceive the customs authorities. To conceal the origin of the product they use transshipment: counterfeit goods are carried through several territories before reaching a final destination. Customs officials have found, for instance, that counterfeit goods produced in China and bound for Russia passed through Germany and Finland. Sometimes products are partly manufactured in one country, assembled in another, transported through a third one and eventually sold in a fourth country. Counterfeiters use other tricks – like mixing up genuine (often stolen!) and counterfeit products, mainly for goods sold in hypermarkets and perfumery networks.
It is the billions of endconsumers who are the final decision-makers. By refusing to buy fakes they are in a position to undermine the whole idea of counterfeiting.
In spite of the huge efforts undertaken by national customs, border police, various and numerous international anti-counterfeiting tasks and bodies, the seizures of counterfeit goods count in thousands, while their worldwide sales count in billions of items and trillions of dollars. Any way out? Yes – to make the very production of counterfeits not economically worthwhile. How? By enabling the end consumer to choose whether to buy, or not to buy.
Given a chance to tell an original from a fake, the end-consumer can finally refuse to buy counterfeits – especially those raising health and even life hazards, like fake medicines, alcohol, tobacco, foods, perfumeries, car parts or toys.
Thus it is the billions of end consumers who are the final decision makers; by refusing to buy fakes they are in a position to undermine the whole idea of counterfeiting. The elaborate schemes and networks set up by organised criminal groups become useless: no demand, no supply.
Telling an original from a fake:
making it feasible for everyone
Most existing brand security systems offer sophisticated and costly solutions, when to be able to authenticate a product a consumer, or a wholesaler, or a customs officer have to be equipped with complex and expensive readers, scanners, electronic microscopes etc.
Such technologies as machine-readable inks, “fingerprints”, micro-threads, DNA-based marks, etc can be effective for corporate supply chain protection. Ironically, the wealthy and wellorganised counterfeiter does not take long to catch up with the most advanced brand protection techniques and manages rather sooner than later to clone any sophisticated gadget.
Moreover, being inaccessible to the consumer or law enforcement, these techniques do not protect against those counterfeits that come from beyond the supply chain – like, say, “suitcase imports” of medicines, internet-based sales, street sales, sales through flea-markets, etc. So, the supply chain is protected, but the end consumer is not. He goes on buying fakes and ensuring profits, not for the IP-right holder but for the IP-right offender.
Today the supply chain is protected, but the end consumer is not. He goes on buying fakes and ensuring profits, not for the IP-right holder but for the IP-right offender.
Fortunately, today we have finally come to a point when it is no longer necessary to persuade the authorities that an effective anticounterfeiting technology should be “visible to the naked eye and not require separate readers or scanners for verification”*. It should be also added that another major requirement to an effective anti-counterfeiting system is its reliability against violation, or cloning. The question is: do such technologies exist?
Call-in-the-Numeric-Token-and-Get-the-Answer
The vulnerability of most existing brand protection systems is that all the information necessary to authenticate the product is contained within the protection means itself – which makes it easier for an evil thinker to replicate these protection means. The solution has been found – and it is to divide the protection means in two, and to place a part of the information necessary for authentication not on the product itself, but separately.
Such systems are known as the “Call-inthe- numeric-token”, or CNT systems. The “numeric token” – or an identification number – is located on the protection means, while the information related to this ID number is located in a database. This system enables any interested party to authenticate the product. The interested party can be the end consumer (patient or doctor), the manufacturer, the wholesaler, the customs officer, or any other representative of a regulatory authority.
The ID number on the product is read with the naked eye and forwarded via a telephone or the Internet to the database, which responds with the information necessary for the product authentication. The CNT approach allows creating a system that would be absolutely counterfeit-proof – to fake a distributed system is close to impossible.
Along with being counterfeit-proof, in order to maintain fair competition, an effective technology should be inexpensive and easy to implement. It should allow minimal changes to manufacture process by using standard equipment and incurring minimal personnel training and minimal implementation time.
DINTAG : Meeting the Challenge
The DINTAG Brand Security Service belongs to the said CNT technologies, enables authentication with the naked eye and is easy to apply by manufacturers in any counterfeitaffected industry.
DINTAG stands for the Database of Identification Number Tags. It offers instant product authentication online or through a mobile phone. It is based on marking branded goods and/or their packages with disposable tamper-evident multi-layer tags – dintags – containing unique ID verification numbers. The DINTAG authentication procedure does not require any special equipment, skills or training – it is intuitively simple and takes but a few seconds.
Reaching a hand to all those overwhelmed by the variety and complexity of brand security innovations, dintags can be used cross-industry on any product. At product authentication, the disposable tag cover is pulled off and the uncovered ID number is forwarded through the DINTAG website, or from the mobile phone through WAP or SMS to the DINTAG server. The server responds with the following information: Product Name, Brand Name, Manufacturer, Product Info, Product Image, link to the manufacturer’s website.
For pharma products, the Product Info section can contain the manufacture date, expiry date, serial number of the medicine, and any other information the manufacturer considers relevant for the patient. The website link can take the consumer directly to the page with exhaustive info on the product being authenticated. The system allows the authenticator himself to make a conclusion on the product authenticity – by comparing the info given out by the DINTAG server to the info on the product being authenticated. If this information coincides, the product is authentic, and if not, the product is counterfeit.
Each ID number on the dintag is unique, and up to the moment the dintag cover is removed it remains unknown. Once a dintag ID number has been entered into the system, at any attempt to enter it again the system will warn: “This number has been checked up before”, and will tell exactly when and how many times. Thus, it is not economically worthwhile for the counterfeiter to replicate an original number on a series of counterfeits – the system will recognize the fake anyway.
All the ID numbers inside dintags are randomly generated – so if a counterfeiter decides to make lookalike tags he will have to put his own numbers inside. When a fake number from a fake tag is entered into the DINTAG system, the server’s response will be: “the DINTAG database does not contain information related to this ID number”. Thus we make sure that the DINTAG system is absolutely counterfeit-proof.
The DINTAG authentication procedure does not require any special equipment, skills or training – it is intuitively simple and takes but a few seconds. Reaching a hand to all those overwhelmed by the variety and complexity of brand security innovations, dintags can be used crossindustry on any product.
Manufacturers can use standard labeling machines on production lines, or labeling guns for manual marking, avoiding the need for any significant changes to manufacture process. Wholesale packages can be marked by several dintags to ensure authentication throughout the supply chain or multiple selective checks by customs and/or police. After dintagging the products, the manufacturer enters into the DINTAG database only the range of open running numbers corresponding to the dintags used to mark the said product.
These numbers are printed on the back of the tape with dintags. This procedure helps essentially simplify the manufacturer-to-DINTAG interaction and minimises the implementation costs. Yet another cost saving advantage of the system is that the manufacturer activates individual dintags only upon dintagging the products – which allows shipping unactivated dintags to manufacturers by conventional mail without any risk of misuse.
Dintagged products gain marketing advantages over their competitors by enabling the consumer to make sure he is buying the genuine. And last but not least, through the use of the DINTAG service the brand owner and/ or law enforcement is able to receive reliable feedback from the consumers. The archived data on the checks executed through the DINTAG server can be also used as evidence in court.
6,5 Billion Brand Protect ion Agents
There is no doubt that protecting the supply chain is important. Yet it is time the manufacturer realised that it is the end consumer who will protect the brands and bring back the markets lost to counterfeiters. The end-consumer only can say a final ‘NO ’ and refuse buying fakes, the end-consumer only can blow up the markets for counterfeits. No demand – no supply.
Inga Daugeliene
CEO, Dintag Corp. Oy
inga.daugeliene@dintag.com
*Bill S1082 introduced by the Federal Drug and Food
Administration to the US Senate on April 10, 2007
