Patent Application
20130258025
The present invention relates to an anti-counterfeit method for a document, in particular a paper document, such as a credit title like a bank cheque, or other types of documents, such as insurance documents for vehicles, transit authorization for vehicles, transport documents for goods, etc.
Furthermore, the invention relates to an apparatus for carrying out said method.
As well known, credit institutions such as banks, or other private or public bodies, emit bank cheques like refund cheques, generally bank drafts, which are then sent to their customers, for example to refund money that was paid incorrectly or in surplus, or for other objects.
In particular, refund cheques are generated automatically by a data processing print system that prints the cheque with all the fields filled in, such as the amount to refund and the addressee. Then, these cheques are delivered by mail to the addressee.
It happens, with increasing frequency, that such cheques, normally of low amount, are falsified after mailing. More precisely, once stolen the cheques, falsifiers can change name of the addressee, indicating a fictitious company or a person directly connected to them, which can collect the sum indicated in the cheque.
Such counterfeiting expedient is particularly difficult to discover, unless the addressee reminds the credit institution to send the refund cheque.
In this case, the bank should emit a new refund cheque, with the same risk of not being delivered again.
Other document counterfeiting also occurs, for example, for insurance documents which have to be exposed on vehicles circulating on road. In particular insurance documents are falsified modifying, for example, the date of lapse of the insurance policy, or the number of the contract, or other data.
Even further examples of counterfeited documents are those coming from public institutions or administrations. For example permits for vehicles, such as permits valid in zones where a pass for transit or a permit of a parking permit is required, can be falsified changing the plate or registration number of the vehicle, the documents for carrying goods, etc.
Obviously, there are other examples of documents, generally paper documents, which can be falsified.
Many anti-counterfeiting methods for documents exist, for example watermarks, plasticization or covering layers that cover alterable data fields with a protection film. However, these methods can be easily counterfeited by expert falsifiers by available graphic technologies and systems.
In WO2008093093 an anti-counterfeiting method is described that associates to a document, such as a passport, an identity card or a drivers license, or even a compact-disc, a DVD etc., an univocal number or identification code that certifies its authenticity. In this case, the authenticity of the product can be controlled by a reader that reads the number or identification code that is compared with a database. If two codes coincide the product or document is authentic.
It is a feature of the present invention to provide an anti-counterfeiting method for a document, for example a credit title, a permit, a transport document or an insurance document, which allows prevents counterfeiting at least one field of the document, such as the fields of the cheque or an ID number or other sensible data.
It is a particular feature of the present invention to provide an anti-counterfeiting method for a credit title, in particular a bank cheque that prevents counterfeiting the field of the cheque.
It is also a feature of the present invention to provide an anti-counterfeiting method for a credit title that can be implemented in a dedicated printing system of the above described credit titles, insurance documents, permits or transport documents.
It is also a feature of the present invention to provide an anti-counterfeiting apparatus for documents that achieves the same objects.
These and other objects are achieved by an anti-counterfeiting method for a document, in particular a credit title, an insurance document, a permit or a transport document, comprising the steps of:
Advantageously, said cutting step provides the duplication of said characters of said cut data field by perforating said document.
In particular, said perforation is carried out with a plurality of small through holes that describe said characters of said field. This way, it is possible to reproduce on the document cut characters duplicating those of any data field of the document, such as, for example, the addressee field in case of credit titles, or a vehicle registration number, the kind of vehicle and the expiration date, in case of an insurance document or of a parking permit, the identification data of goods or persons, etc., frustrating any possible attempt of counterfeiting the same. The cut data that duplicate the data present in the original document, in fact, jeopardize any possibility of falsifying the document data by simply erasing the original data and reprinting falsified data. In fact, if the characters reprinted in the data field do not coincide with the cut data, there is an apparent evidence of counterfeiting.
In particular, any missing material on the document, either of paper or of plastic, is extremely difficult to replace with other material without that the replacement is visible. In case, instead, the falsification consists of duplicating the whole document, it is necessary that the cut that describes the protected characters is repeated also in the falsified document, with relevant difficulty for falsifiers.
Alternatively, the cutting step provides the duplication of said characters of said cut data field by means of removal of material without perforating the document, in particular colored material is removed from a colored background of said document, in such a way that cut characters are reproduced by means of abrasion of the colored background.
In particular, said cutting step provides, in addition to said duplication of said data field with removal of material, a linear cut to obtain tear-off lines for separating different documents from each other in a continuous printing process.
In a first exemplary embodiment, said reading step provides a step of scanning with optical character recognition of said printed data field on said document, in order to produce a corresponding cutting signal computed starting from said optical recognition. In this exemplary embodiment, there is then an OCR scanning step of at least one field of the preprinted document and a computing step of the scanned data for eventually duplicating the data with incision.
In particular, said reading step provides an OCR scanning of further fields of said document, and said cutting step provides the duplication of said further fields. For example, in a bank cheque, the letters of the amount of the cheque can be duplicated, as well as the figures of the amount of the cheque, whereas in an insurance document or a parking permit, the vehicle registration number and the kind of vehicle, as well as the expiration date can be duplicated. This increases the rate of safety of the document avoiding any possible counterfeiting.
Advantageously, said reading and cutting steps are carried out on a continuous line where a plurality of said documents is supplied as a continuous sequence. In this case, for each document the following steps are carried out: a scanning step of a predetermined data field, an optical recognition of the alphanumerical characters present in said data field, and a following cut suitable for reproducing the characters of the data field with determined cut characters.
In a second exemplary embodiment, said method provides, during said printing step, printing a predetermined activation/command code on said document and said reading step provides the further steps of:
In particular, said cutting step is a laser cutting step that, responsive to said activation/command code, allows creating said cut data field duplicating the same characters of said printed data field. This way, the laser cut responsive to the activation/command code makes it possible to obtain, for each kind of document, a dedicated duplication of the data field.
In particular, said activation/command code contains additional data on the generation of perforation lines for separating portions of documents or for separating adjacent sheets of printed documents on a continuous web of paper. This way, it is possible to provide on the document a desired configuration of the tearing lines.
Advantageously, said activation/command code is an optical code selected from the group consisting of: a bar code, a data matrix or other type.
In particular, the optical code contains data relative both to duplicating a desired data field by cutting with the laser, and to cutting controls for executing on the document, for example, tear lines or clean cuts for separating the many documents from each other.
According to another aspect of the invention, an anti-counterfeiting apparatus for a document, in particular a credit title, an insurance document, a permit or a transport document, comprising:
Advantageously, said cutting means is arranged to duplicate said characters of said cut data field by perforating said document.
Alternatively to the perforation, said cutting means is arranged to duplicate the characters of said cut data field by means of removal of material without perforating the document, through a plurality of shallow abrasions of the document, for example in a field on a colored background, so that colored material is removed and the cut characters are reproduced by means of abrasion of the colored background.
In particular, said cutting means is arranged to cut, beyond to the duplication of said data field with removal of material, linear cut lines to obtain tear-off lines for separating different documents from each other in a continuous printing process.
In a first exemplary embodiment, said means for reading is adapted to scan with optical recognition the characters of said printed data field on said document, in order to produce a corresponding cutting signal computed starting from said optical recognition scan.
In particular, said means for reading is adapted to scan further fields of said document and to analyze the relative optical recognition, and said cutting means is arranged to duplicate said further fields.
Advantageously, said means for reading and cutting is adapted to be arranged on a continuous line where a plurality of said documents is provided, such as credit titles, insurance documents or permit documents, transport documents, etc., as a continuous sequence. In this case, for each document the following steps are carried out: scanning a data field of the document, optical recognition of the alphanumerical characters present in said data field and cutting the document to duplicate the characters of the data field with corresponding cut characters.
In a second exemplary embodiment, said means for printing is adapted to print a predetermined activation/command code on said document and said means for reading comprises:
In particular, said cutting means is a laser cutting means that, responsive to said activation/command code, creates said cut data field duplicating the same characters of said printed data field.
Advantageously, said activation/command code is an optical code selected from the group consisting of: a bar code, a data matrix or other type.
In particular, the optical codes are configured to contain command data relative both to duplicating by cut a desired data field, by the laser, and to cutting controls for executing on the document, for example, tear lines or clean cuts for separating the many documents from each other.
In particular, said laser cutting means comprises at least one laser head arranged above said document adapted to generate at least one laser beam enclosed in a predetermined cutting area, said laser cutting means being associated with adjustment means of said laser beam that allows adjusting the cutting rate on said document.
This way, it is possible to obtain a more or less pronounced cut, for example responsive to the text to duplicate, for example a duplication with a light abrasion or a duplication with the perforation of the document, or still responsive to the kind of density of the paper document on which the cut is made, or responsive to other parameters.
The invention will be now shown with the following description of an exemplary embodiment thereof, exemplifying but not limitative, with reference to the attached drawings in which:
finally,
With reference to
The apparatus 100 further comprises a means for reading 30, 30′ (
Furthermore, as shown in
Furthermore, other data fields 17, 19, 72, 92 can be printed with relative duplicated cut fields 17a, 19a, 72a, 92a as shown below, such as, for example, the proprietor data field of an insurance document or of a parking permit, the identification data of goods or persons, etc., frustrating each possible attempt of counterfeiting the same. Other documents that can be made with this system are for example restaurant tickets.
In these cases, a corresponding document 10′(
The cut that duplicates the identification data in original document 10, 70, 90, in fact, jeopardizes any possibility of falsifying the document data by simply erasing the original data and reprinting falsified data. In fact, if the characters printed in data field 12, 14, 17, 19, 72, 92 do not coincide with the cut data 12a, 14a, 17a, 19a, 72a, 92a, there is an apparent evidence of counterfeiting. In other words, missing material, on a paper or plastic document, is extremely difficult to replace with other material without that the replacement is visible. In case, instead, the falsification consists of repeating the whole document 10, 70, 90, it is necessary that the cut that describes the protected characters is repeated also in falsified document 10, 70, 90, with relevant difficulty for falsifiers.
In case of controls, it is enough for the controller to check that the characters printed in data field 12, 14, 17, 19, 72, 92 coincide with cut data field 12a, 14a, 17a, 19a, 72a, 92a.
More in detail, in the exemplary embodiment of
In detail, as shown in
In particular, scanning means 35 is configured to scan contemporaneously also further fields 14 of document 10 and to analyze the relative optical recognition data, and cutting means 50 is configured to duplicate further fields 14 by cutting. For example, in a bank cheque, as shown in
As shown in
In addition, as shown in
Always as shown in
In particular, the activation/command code 32 is printed on a side portion 11 of the document that eventually is torn off from the document.
Furthermore, the means for generating 40′ is configured to generate a cutting signal 45′ responsive to the read activation/command code 32, and cutting means 50 is configured to cut document 10, 70, 90 on the basis of cutting signal 45′ in order to generate a text to cut, which is driven by the predetermined activation/command code 32, as shown in
In particular, cutting means 50 is a laser cutting means that, responsive to activation/command code 32, creates cut data field 12a, 14a, 17a, 19a, 72a, 92a that duplicates printed data field 12, 14, 17, 19, 72, 92, and can also create a cutting line 24 between the many documents. More precisely, the activation/command code 32, is an optical code selected from the group consisting of: a bar code 32a (
In particular, optical codes 32 can contain command data relative both to duplicating by cut a desired data field 12, 14, 17, 19, 72, 92, by laser 50, and to cut document 10, 70, 90 according to cutting lines 24, as tear-off lines or clean cuts, for separating the many documents from each other. This way, the laser cutter is responsive to the activation code, and driver 32 makes it possible to obtain, for each kind of document 10, 70, 90, a dedicated duplication of data field 12, 14, 17, 19, 72, 92 or a dedicated configuration of the tearing lines. In other words, the use of the activation/command codes allows, furthermore, to carry out different operations for each paper document on a same printing line.
More in particular, the laser cutting means comprises at least one laser head 50 arranged, by a special support frame 52, above document 10, 70, 90 and adapted to generate at least one laser beam 51 enclosed in a predetermined cutting area 53 (
The foregoing description of specific exemplary embodiments will so fully reveal the invention according to the conceptual point of view, so that others, by applying current knowledge, will be able to modify and/or adapt in various applications this specific exemplary embodiments without further research and without parting from the invention, and, then it is meant that such adaptations and modifications will have to be considered as equivalent to the specific embodiments. The means and the materials to realize the different functions described herein could have a different nature without, for this reason, departing from the field of the invention. It is to be understood that the phraseology or terminology that is employed herein is for the purpose of description and not of limitation.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| PI2010A000141 | Dec 2010 | IT | national |
| Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PCT/IB2011/055946 | 12/23/2011 | WO | 00 | 6/14/2013 |
