Technology
What You Can’t See
Is What You Get
New infrared tags fight counterfeiting.
By Anastasia Thrift
Managing Editor
Creating the inks, taggants,
and readers for a covert infrared (IR) coding solution could
strengthen the security for pharmaceutical packaging.
Sun Chemical (Parsippany, NJ) has
created a proprietary solution called
Verigard. The system centers around
small amounts of taggant added to
any ink, varnish, or adhesive. All can
be authenticated with the company’s
proprietary V400 reader.
The company says their method differs slightly from other readers. The
setup provides an additional level of
security.
“It’s a complex algorithm,” says Jim
Reiman, manager for brand protection. “Taggant, reader, ink, and substrate are precisely tuned to act as a
lock and key for very high security.”
“The V400 uses a very sophisticated
algorithm to authenticate the Verigard
Chain of custody integrity
can be crucial to avoiding
counterfeiters.
signature in just fractions of a second. Some competing technologies
are more easily fooled or blinded by
counterfeiters who have learned how
to beat the system.”
The way that Verigard readers process information is sophisticated and
complex. Many other infra red tags,
Reiman says, use a simple algorithm
that is easy to defeat.
“It really is a lock and
key between the taggant, the way we tune
the reader and the substrate,” Reiman continues. “Usually with the
IR you have a narrow
spectrum, a certain
number of unique taggants. We fixed that by
making the authentic
signature look very spe- Alphanumeric codes can be printed in infrared ink from Sun
cific against the back- Chemical, adding serialization to security measures.
ground graphics. With
our reader, we can distinguish the
same taggant in multiple inks, var-nishes or adhesives.”
Unlike other security providers, Sun
Chemical maintains complete control
of their taggants and does not ship to
third party ink manufacturers.
“When a security company ships
taggant to a third-party ink manufacturer or printer, and the ink is made
up, and there’s an error—who get’s
blamed?” Reiman asks.
Because Sun Chemical delivers press-ready ink solutions, it maintains the
chain of custody integrity, which can be
crucial to avoiding counterfeiters.
“We use the same taggant when
we do ink-jet printing,” Reiman says.
“We can do that in any conventional
print process such as offset, screen,
and CIJ.”
Customers will not have to retool to
use the technology. When Verigard is
used with ink-jet printers, the unique
identifiers are called Vericode.
“Vericode allows us to use variable
data,” Reiman says. “You can make
every item different. That’s where
serialization comes in. What we do
with Vericode is print a completely
invisible ink-jet mark. Really invisible so no one knows it’s there. You
can do it right over the image on the
carton.”
Printing over existing graphics
lets packagers maximize their label
space. It also makes duplicating or
obliterating the code more difficult
for diverters. A special reader, called
the V500, is used to see Vericode
markings.
The code can be a 2-D barcode
and/or an alphanumeric sequence.
This further protects the product from
counterfeiting.
In addition to marking labels, Vericode can be used for direct product
marking. ■
