What is brand protection?

In today’s fast moving global environment, major brands, governments and individuals are at increasing risk from counterfeit and diverted products, fake and falsified documents, and the organised criminal activity often associated with them.

Whilst much of this activity is targeted at the tobacco, alcohol and luxury goods sectors, it is an increasingly significant problem across all markets. Not only does the booming counterfeit market undercut profits – former immigration minister Damian Green said in June 2010 that smugglers undercut honest businesses by an estimated £11 billion a year in the UK – but it also means there is huge potential for damage to be done to individuals and the organisations and governments targeted by the criminals. Hence, brand protection is more important than ever.

Brand owners and governments are using ever more complex and expensive security and brand protection technologies to protect their goods and citizens and rely upon adding physical features to a product or document that are secure only because the genuine manufacturer can do something that the counterfeiter cannot. Unfortunately history has shown that the counterfeiters are smart and motivated; if a method exists to produce a security feature, then the counterfeiters can replicate it.

At Ingenia Technology we take a different approach. As the inventors of Laser Surface Authentication (LSA™) we use our technology to scan the naturally occurring randomness found in every surface and use this to give every item a unique identity. These microscopic variations cannot be duplicated by the genuine manufacturer and nothing is added, so there is nothing to copy. This unique item level ID can then be used for brand protection, track & trace and document authentication.