To protect products against counterfeiting, manufacturers use various security features. To apply these features to the product, a standard barcode is a very common method. With so-called cloning, there is a risk that counterfeiters will acquire original products and copy the security features exactly. The counterfeiter then produces a large number of supposedly genuine products with the specific print image of the original.
Various providers of security features have now attempted to prevent copying, i.e. cloning, by counterfeiters. For this purpose, special printing processes or their own barcodes outside the ECC200 standard barcode are used, among other things. A prerequisite for this may be the use of special software or even hardware to be able to interpret the security features accordingly. As a consequence, the possibility of testing is limited to own inspectors and two essential advantages of open marking are lost: neither market data for marketing intelligence evaluations can be generated nor meaningful results can be achieved. The idea starts with your own inspectors and not with a large-scale inspection in the market. The scan rate will therefore be very low. Customer communication is also neglected with this approach, since the inspection is not carried out by the customer himself. The brand message and the own quality standards cannot be communicated to the customer.
It is also highly questionable whether a copy can be effectively prevented by counterfeiters. Serialization with SecIdent therefore starts at a different point:
SecIdent generates unique and counterfeit-proof Serialcodes that can be embedded in any form of 2D code (e. g. data matrix, QR-Code or PDF417). By scanning the code with a smartphone, the stored inspection page with the corresponding serial code is called up in the browser. The user is then taken directly to the response page and can check the product for authenticity quickly and easily. On the other hand, each individual check is counted and statistically stored. SecIdent has rules that determine how often a single serial number - the security feature of SecIdent - can be checked. If this value is exceeded, the manufacturer is given the opportunity for the first time to trace the facts of copied security features.
For economic reasons, counterfeiters will not acquire several original products and adopt their security mechanisms, but only one. Thus the counterfeiter will produce a large number of counterfeits with the security feature of a single product. Thanks to the comprehensive examination of customers on the market and the exact evaluation in SecIdent, such a case is immediately noticed. With security features that are not intended for verification by customers but by the company's own inspectors, these counterfeits might not even be noticed.
By using the option variable response pages, the customer can also be asked to share information about the dealer with the manufacturer. Connections and logistic channels regarding the market entry of the counterfeit can be effectively uncovered. SecIdent also offers the tool of audit groups for testing. This means that members of a test group are counted and evaluated separately. This option further increases the detection of counterfeits, as multiple scanned codes of the group inspector immediately indicate a counterfeit and customers and own inspectors are evaluated in separate statistics.
The open serialization approach is much more effective than preventing cloning with optical and mechanical methods due to the large-area customer verification on the market.