Patent Grant
9842231
Counterfeiting of consumer goods is a rapidly increasing problem, and results in hundreds of billions of dollars in losses annually. Counterfeit products made to low quality standards impact not only revenues but also the good will of a brand, and can endanger the consumers of the product as well.
Counterfeiters have devised numerous tactics to attempt to pass off counterfeit goods as genuine branded products. One such tactic is to provide counterfeit goods with serial numbers that mimic the serial numbers of authentic products. Known serialization schemes typically include at least one sequentially incrementing digit that is located at the same position in the serial number. It is therefore easy for counterfeiters to imitate a range and scheme of serial numbers simply by looking at a small batch of serial numbers, identifying the incrementing digits, and printing labels, according to the scheme, that appear to be authentic.
It is therefore desirable to increase the difficulty of reverse-engineering serial numbers so as to impede counterfeiters from easily determining the serialization scheme of the numbers.
The embodiments of the present invention described below are not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise forms disclosed in the following detailed description. Rather, the embodiments are chosen and described so that others skilled in the art may appreciate and understand the principles and practices of the present invention.
According to at least one exemplary embodiment, an anti-counterfeiting serialization method. The method can include receiving an input serial number, locating a seed character at a predetermined position in the input serial number, determining, based on the seed character, a first output position for an incrementing character of the input serial number, determining, based on the incrementing character, at least one second output position for at least one remaining character of the input serial number, and generating an output serial number having the incrementing character in the first output position and at least one remaining character in the at least one second output position.
Other features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from the following detailed description. It is to be understood, however, that the detailed description of the various embodiments and specific examples, while indicating preferred and other embodiments of the present invention, are given by way of illustration and not limitation. Many changes and modifications within the scope of the present invention may be made without departing from the spirit thereof, and the invention includes all such modifications.
Advantages of embodiments of the present invention will be apparent from the following detailed description of the exemplary embodiments. The following detailed description should be considered in conjunction with the accompanying figures in which:
Aspects of the invention are disclosed in the following description and related drawings directed to specific embodiments of the invention. Alternate embodiments may be devised without departing from the spirit or the scope of the invention. Additionally, well-known elements of exemplary embodiments of the invention will not be described in detail or will be omitted so as not to obscure the relevant details of the invention. Further, to facilitate an understanding of the description discussion of several terms used herein follows.
As used herein, the word “exemplary” means “serving as an example, instance or illustration.” The embodiments described herein are not limiting, but rather are exemplary only. It should be understood that the described embodiment are not necessarily to be construed as preferred or advantageous over other embodiments. Moreover, the terms “embodiments of the invention”, “embodiments” or “invention” do not require that all embodiments of the invention include the discussed feature, advantage or mode of operation.
Referring now to
An exemplary input serial number 200 having fifteen digits is shown in
Turning back to
Once the seed character is located, the order of characters for the scrambled output serial number may be determined. At step 106, an output position for the incrementing character may be determined. The output position for the incrementing character may be based on the value of the seed character of the input serial number. The output position for the incrementing character may be determined by referring to a sequence position table. An exemplary sequence position table 300 is shown in
At step 108, the output positions for at least one remaining character may be determined, the remaining characters being any character in the serial number that is not the seed character or the incrementing character. The output positions for remaining characters may be based on value of the incrementing character of the input serial number, as well as based on the output position of the incrementing character in the output serial number. The output positions for remaining characters may be determined by referring to a scramble sequence table.
An exemplary scramble sequence table 310 is shown in
Once all desired output positions have been determined, at step 110, the output scrambled serial number may be generated. An exemplary output scrambled serial number 220 is shown in
In some exemplary embodiments, the output position of the incrementing digit may be limited to a range of positions that are located away from the edges of the output serial number. For example, for a fifteen-character serial number, the incrementing digit may be disposed between the third and the eleventh position of the output serial number. Such positioning of the incrementing digit can serve to make the incrementing digit less obvious to a counterfeiter attempting to determine the sequencing scheme of the serial number.
Descrambling of a scrambled serial number can be performed according to an exemplary method 400. At step 402, the input scrambled serial number may be received. At step 404, the seed character may be located at a predetermined position in the input scrambled serial number, which would be the same position as in an unscrambled serial number. At step 406, the position of the incrementing character in the input serial number may be determined by referencing a sequence position table 300. The value of the incrementing character can thus be identified. At step 408, the output position of the incrementing character and at least one remaining character can be determined by referencing a scramble sequence table 310 so as to select a scramble sequence corresponding to the value of the incrementing character. The output positions can then be determined by comparing the selected scramble sequence to the unscrambled positions. At step 408, an output unscrambled serial number may be generated once all output positions have been determined.
It should be appreciated that while the exemplary embodiments discussed above referred to a fifteen-digit serial number and a seed character in the sixth position of the serial number, the method disclosed herein may be used with serial numbers of any desired length or combination of characters, e.g. numeric, alphanumeric, letters, geometric figures and the like. Likewise, the positioning of the seed character, the incrementing character and any remaining characters may be varied as desired. Additionally, the sequence positions and scramble sequences in tables 300, 310 are merely exemplary, and may be varied as desired.
Database 512, database software 513, and serialization software 514 may be stored on the computer-readable medium 506 of computing device 502. Computing device 502 may also include, or be communicatively coupled to, a printing device 516, which may be any printing device known in the art.
The printing device 516 may be used to print labels, tags, or other substrates that may be attached or otherwise connected to a consumer product or other item of value. The tag or label may contain additional human readable indicia such as brand identifiers, care instructions, components, origin of manufacture, sizes or any other information that the manufacturer may wish to add to the tag or label. In addition, the tag or label may also include a radio frequency identification (RFID) device which can contain additional information relating to the particular product with which it is associated. For example the RFID device can have a unique ID number in addition to product related information which may be provided via an electronic product code (EPC). Use of an RFID device along with the serialized chain provided herein may provide additional product security and authenticity. Exemplary RFID devices are available from Avery Dennison Retail Information Services, LLC, of Westborough, Mass.
The printing device 516 can also print other machine readable indicia such as bar codes, 2D codes and the like. These codes may be scanned by a mobile device or other machine vision type system to provide further security.
Computing device 502b may include serialization software 514 and may include a user-accessible interface. Computing device 502c may include database 512 and database software 513 and may be a local or remote server. Database software 513 may further be adapted to implement method 400. Computing device 502b may be in communication with computing device 502c via a local-area or wide-area network, or any other wired or wireless communications protocol.
In the exemplary embodiments, database 512 may store a plurality of batch numbers. The batch numbers may be retrieved from database 512 and sent to serialization software 514. Serialization software 514 may generate unscrambled serial numbers from the batch numbers, for example by combining the batch numbers with other serial number portions, for example product ID numbers, and so forth. The serial numbers generated by serialization software 514 may then be sent to database 512 and to printing device 516.
Prior to printing, the serial numbers may then be scrambled according to method 100. This may be performed by serialization software 514, or by printing device 516. The set of scrambled serial numbers may then be printed by printing device 516. Once the scrambled serial numbers are printed, a confirmation, for example including a batch ID and the quantity of serial numbers printed may be sent from printing device 516 to database 512. The printed serial numbers are thus identified as printed in database 512. The serial numbers may be stored in database 512 in an unscrambled format.
To verify a serial number, for example to determine that a product is genuine, the serial number may be scanned or entered into an interface that is in communication with database 512. Database software 513 may determine whether an entered serial number is scrambled or unscrambled, for example by checking the length and format of the number. If the entered serial number is scrambled, database software 513 may perform the steps of method 400 so as to unscramble the serial number. The unscrambled serial number may then be matched to the serial numbers stored in database 512. If a match exists, it may be determined that the entered serial number is genuine.
Thus, the embodiments disclosed herein present an anti-counterfeiting serialization method that increases the difficulty of reverse-engineering a serial number scheme from a batch of serial numbers, while allowing easy verification of the authenticity of a serial number.
The foregoing description and accompanying figures illustrate the principles, preferred embodiments and modes of operation of the invention. However, the invention should not be construed as being limited to the particular embodiments discussed above. Additional variations of the embodiments discussed above will be appreciated by those skilled in the art.
Therefore, the above-described embodiments should be regarded as illustrative rather than restrictive. Accordingly, it should be appreciated that variations to those embodiments can be made by those skilled in the art without departing from the scope of the invention as defined by the following claims.
The present application claims priority from U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/923,907 filed Jan. 6, 2014, which is incorporated by herein by reference in its entirety.
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