BE1030079B1 - Systems and methods for identifying goods - Google Patents

Abstract

Method of identifying an article comprising: scanning an area of an article to obtain a fingerprint of the article, the fingerprint encoding a spatial profile of light and dark elements present in the area, generating, at based on the spatial profile, of a unique digital ID for the item and storing the unique digital ID as a record on a blockchain hosted by a network of computing nodes.

Description

Systems and methods for identifying goods BE2021/6041

AREA

The embodiments described herein relate to systems and methods for identifying goods. More particularly, embodiments relate to systems and methods that can determine, based on the identity of the goods, whether those goods are being sold without proper tax being paid.

BACKGROUND

When selling certain types of goods in different countries, taxes must be paid on these goods. Examples of such goods include tobacco, alcohol, drugs and medicines. To facilitate payment, the local or national government in each country issues tax or revenue stamps, which usually take the form of a paper label that can be stuck to the goods (e.g. bottles) with some kind of adhesive. The tax stamps are purchased by the producers of the goods and affixed to those goods as proof that the tax has been paid. Goods sold in a particular country without the appropriate tax stamp, or found to have a counterfeit stamp, can then be identified as contraband.

The conventional method of enforcing the payment of excise duties by means of paper tax stamps has been used for many years, but it has a number of problems. In order to combat counterfeiting, it may be necessary to build various anti-counterfeiting tools into revenue stamps, such as holograms. The tax stamps must be manufactured under the strict supervision of the government authorities in each country, and once produced must be safely transported to the producers of the goods, increasing both the cost and the environmental footprint.

It is therefore desirable to provide other means to enable public authorities and other parties to verify whether the required excise duties have been paid on specific items.

RESUME

According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of identifying an article comprising: scanning an area of an article to obtain a fingerprint of the article, the fingerprint being a spatial profile of light and dark elements encodes in the area; generating, based on the spatial profile, a unique digital ID for the article; and storing the unique digital ID as a record on a blockchain hosted by a network of computing nodes.

The method may further include: receiving, by a third party, the article; scanning, by the third party, the area for reproducing the fingerprint and the digital ID; and comparing the digital ID to the blockchain record to confirm the item's identity.

The method may further include: receiving, by the third party, confirmation that a tax has been paid or is payable on an item having the unique digital ID; and based on the confirmation, identifying the item received as an item for which tax has been paid or payable.

The confirmation that the tax on the item has been paid can be stored on the blockchain.

The method may further include: printing a data carrier on the article, the data carrier encoding a data string used to label the article; and wherein scanning the area of the article comprises scanning the area comprising the data carrier, the fingerprint encoding the spatial profile of light and dark elements present in the data carrier.

The data carrier can be printed by applying a plurality of ink drops to the article, the spatial profile being such that distinction | BE2021/6041 can be made between two data carriers encoding the same data sequence, but with variations in the size and/or positioning of the ink droplets.

The data string encoded by the data carrier may comprise an alphanumeric string.

The data string encoded by the data carrier can be stored on the blockchain in combination with the digital ID of the item.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method comprising: establishing a smart contract between two parties on a blockchain network, the smart contract specifying an agreement for a first of the parties to produce a batch of one or multiple articles; producing the batch of one or more items; for each item: scanning an area of the item to obtain a fingerprint of the item, the fingerprint encoding a spatial profile of light and dark elements in the area; generating, based on the spatial profile, a unique digital ID for the article; and executing the smart contract by providing a batch report confirming the production of the items and the unique digital ID for each item, with each item's unique digital ID at the time of execution of the smart contract as a record on the blockchain is stored.

The method may further include: receiving, by the second of the parties, one of the produced articles; scanning, by the second of the parties, the area for reproducing the fingerprint and the digital ID; and comparing the digital ID to the blockchain record to confirm that the item belongs to the lot of items specified in the smart contract.

The method may further include:

the receipt, by the second of the parties, of confirmation that a BE2021/6041 tax has been paid or is due for the lot of one or more items; based on the confirmation, identifying the received item as an item for which tax has been paid or is due.

The confirmation that the tax on the item has been paid or is due can be stored on the blockchain.

The method may further include: for each article: printing a data carrier on the article, the data carrier encoding a data string used to label the article; and wherein scanning the area of the article comprises scanning the area comprising the data carrier, the fingerprint encoding the spatial profile of light and dark elements present in the data carrier.

The data carrier can be printed by applying a plurality of ink drops to the article, the spatial profile being such that it is possible to distinguish between two data carriers encoding the same data sequence, but with variations in the size and/or positioning of the ink drops .

The data string encoded by the data carrier may comprise an alphanumeric string.

The data string encoded by the data carrier can be stored on the blockchain in combination with the digital ID of the item.

Each article can be a container for storing a drink.

According to a third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a computer readable storage medium comprising computer executable instructions which, when executed by one or more computers, will cause the one or more computers to perform a method according to the first aspect of the present invention. invention or the second aspect of the present invention. BE2021/6041

In the embodiments described herein, a unique identifier is obtained for each item produced, the identifier being stored on the blockchain. The unique identifier is obtained by scanning an area of the item. In some embodiments, the area may be an area that includes a data carrier used to encode additional numeric or alphanumeric data for the article. The spatial information contained in the scan can be processed to obtain a digital ID or fingerprint that is unique to that particular item. An authority responsible for ensuring that the necessary tax has been paid can use the digital

View IDs to see how many goods are taxable.

When a particular taxable item is listed, the authority can confirm that the item has been posted by scanning the item to regenerate the digital ID. If the digital ID thus obtained matches an ID stored on the blockchain, the authority can confirm that the item has been correctly posted and that the necessary tax has been or will be paid. In this way, the embodiments described herein can provide an improved alternative to paper tax stamps.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

Embodiments of the invention will now be described, by way of example, with reference to the accompanying figures, in which:

Figure 1 shows a blockchain network for use in an Embodiment;

Figure 2 shows a schematic representation of the steps performed in the manufacture of an article according to an embodiment;

Figure 3 shows an example of a data carrier printed on an article according to an embodiment;

Figure 4 shows a comparison between two versions of the data carrier of Figure 3, with different spatial profiles;

Figure 5 shows a flowchart of the steps performed in a method according to an embodiment; BE2021/6041

Figure 6 shows a schematic representation of how a user can scan the data carrier on an article according to an embodiment;

Figure 7 shows a flowchart of steps performed by a user to determine the identity of the article; and

Figure 8 shows an example of how a user can determine the tax status of that item by scanning an item and comparing a digital ID obtained from that item to records stored on the blockchain.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The embodiments described herein replace the use of paper tax stamps with a new approach that assigns a unique identifier to each item and stores that identifier on the blockchain, providing an immutable record of each item produced. The blockchain records, in turn, can be used to verify the payment of tax on each item.

The blockchain is hosted on a network of computers, as shown in Figure 1.

Each of the nodes has a copy of the blockchain. The blockchain itself can be seen as a ledger into which data can be entered by the various users. Each time a user adds an entry to the ledger, the information is passed to each of the other nodes on the network, which updates their copies of the ledger accordingly. The new entry is added as part of a block that is hashed back to previous entries in the ledger. As a result, once an entry is added to the ledger, any attempt to rewrite or change that entry requires all subsequent elements in the chain to be updated by each of the nodes as well. Since this can only be done with the approval of a majority of the nodes in the network, the ledger data is safe from falsification.

In the embodiments described herein, the blockchain is used to store a record of each item for which due tax is due.

To this end, a unique identifier is obtained for each article produced. The BE2021/6041 process of generating the unique identifier is discussed in more detail with reference to Figures 2 to 4.

Figure 2 shows an example of the steps taken in a production line according to an embodiment. In this example, the goods include bottles of a particular beverage, but it will be appreciated that the methods described herein can be applied to a number of different types of goods, including pharmaceuticals, cigarettes and tobacco, etc.

The process starts with filling each empty bottle with the desired drink (step S1).

For surveillance purposes, the process can be monitored by one or more cameras with cloud storage. Subsequently, in step S2, a data carrier is printed on the bottle. The term “data carrier,” as used herein, refers to a two-dimensional pattern that encodes a predetermined data sequence in a machine-readable format. Examples of such data carriers include bar codes, QR codes, dot codes and dot matrices. In any case, the data carrier comprises a sequence of light and dark elements arranged within a known framework which can be read and interpreted by a suitable computer algorithm to retrieve the underlying data sequence.

For example, in the case of a barcode, the frame comprises a series of vertical lines, with information encoded into the barcode using different series of dark and light lines throughout the code. Similarly, QR codes and other types of matrix barcodes such as dot cots comprise a grid of squares, with some squares appearing dark while others appear light. The layout of dark and light squares in the grid can be used to encode data in the same way as the series of dark and light lines in the barcode. Thus, by knowing the specific type of data carrier and how to interpret the arrangement of light and dark elements within that data carrier, it is possible to retrieve the encoded data sequence. The data string encoded by the data carrier can include a sequence of numbers or an alphanumeric code, such as "ABC 123", for example. Data strings that include much longer strings of characters can also be encoded.

The data carrier can be added in a number of ways. In one example, an inkjet printing process is used to print the data carrier onto the bottle. In another example, a laser printing process can be used to print the data carrier BE2021/6041.

Once the data carrier has been printed on the bottle, a reader is used to scan the data carrier (step S3). The image obtained by scanning the data carrier is processed using a suitable image processing algorithm to determine the data sequence encoded on the data carrier. At the same time, the scanned image is processed to obtain a fingerprint for the bottle, which differs from the data set encoded on the data carrier. More specifically, the fingerprint is a set of data that encodes the variations in intensity throughout the image, at a finer resolution level than is required to retrieve the information in the data carrier; that is, the fingerprint encodes variations in intensity at a resolution level finer than the individual elements (e.g. grid squares) contained in the data carrier. That way, the fingerprint can provide a unique identifier for the bottle. This can be further understood by reference to Figures 3 and 4.

Figure 3 shows a bottle 301 with a record carrier 303 printed thereon using an inkjet printing process. In this example, the data carrier 303 comprises a dot matrix encoding the sequence "ABC 123". While this set of characters can be used to distinguish the bottle from other bottles, the "ABC 123" sequence does not in itself provide a unique identifier for the bottle, as a counterfeiter could produce other bottles with this set of characters. Nevertheless, due to random fluctuations in the operation of the printer and/or due to inconsistencies in the media of which the goods are made, the particular version of the data carrier printed on the bottle 301 is distinguished from other versions.

To help demonstrate this further, Figure 4 shows two versions of the same data carrier 401, 403 as printed on two separate bottles. In any case, the record carrier is printed by applying a series of ink drops 405 to the surface of the bottle. It will be appreciated that in the example shown the size of the droplets has been exaggerated for clarity. The pattern of the individual drops in the second version of the data carrier 403 is almost identical to that in the first version of the data carrier 401. However, it is clear that there are minor differences between the two. For example, some of the individual ink droplets 405, 407, 409 are larger than others, while other droplets 411, BE2021/6041 413 are the same size, yet slightly offset so that their edges are not perfectly aligned with those of other droplets in the same row and/or column of the matrix.

These small variations in size and/or position may be due to changes in the printer's operating parameters, such as temperature or the influence of vibrations from other equipment. Similar distortions can occur due to variations in the consistency of the ink or, in the case of a laser printer, due to expansion/contraction of the optics used to focus the laser.

Since the layout of the drops in the data carrier 403 still corresponds to the same general pattern as that of the data carrier 401, both data carriers will be recognized to encode the same data sequence 415a, 415b when they are scanned. Nevertheless, due to the variations in size and/or position of the individual drops in the data carrier 403 compared to that of the data carrier 401, the fingerprint 4174, 417b generated for each bottle will be different.

It therefore appears from the above and from Figure 4 that when reading the data carrier to retrieve the data set, a first level of image resolution is required, whereby it is necessary to determine the boundaries of the data carrier and to determine within that area whether the individual elements are light or dark in appearance. The fingerprint, meanwhile, is generated by analyzing the scanned image at a higher resolution level to identify variations in the size and/or shape of those individual elements, and their alignment relative to others in the same row and/or column . The fingerprint can be generated using a machine learning algorithm, such as a Convolutional Neural, for example

Network (CNN). The algorithm can be used to process the image and output the fingerprint as a numerical sequence encoding the variations in intensity across the entire image.

The fingerprint obtained for each item can in turn be used to provide a digital ID for that item. In some cases, the digital ID may be identical to the fingerprint; in other cases, the digital ID can be derived from the fingerprint, but still retain a unique identity. For example, the digital ID can be obtained by running the sequence of numbers in the fingerprint through a hash function.

Once the digital ID for the bottle in question has been generated, the ID can be uploaded to the blockchain. Once the digital ID is recorded on the blockchain, no party can alter or falsely refute that entry. This property of the blockchain, combined with the uniqueness of the digital ID, then provides a basis for determining whether or not a particular item is a taxable item and has been booked by the producer of that item. An example of how this can be done is shown in Figure 5. Here, a producer of goods (eg bottled alcoholic beverages) wants to produce goods for sale in a particular country, subjecting the goods to tax in that country. This process allows the producer of goods to confirm to the appropriate taxing authority that tax has been paid or will be paid on that item, without having to request paper stamps or other such items from that authority.

The producer and the government agency are both members of a blockchain network as shown in Figure 1. Thus, the two parties each have access to a distributed ledger that stores the actions of the members of the network, including the transactions performed by those members.

The process begins with the submission by the manufacturer of a production request to the government agency (step S501). The request specifies a number and type of goods to be produced. The government agency receives the request (step S502) and accepts the request (step S503). At this point, the manufacturer and the government agency set up a smart contract on the blockchain (step S504). The smart contract is implemented as a piece of digital code on the blockchain and involves an agreement between the parties to perform a certain action. In this case, the smart contract confirms the manufacturer's intention to produce the specified goods, with the government agency agreeing to produce these goods in accordance with the terms of the contract. Once the goods are produced, the smart contract is executed, with the confirmation of the items and their identity uploaded to the blockchain. The smart contract may include some or more of the following: Manufacturer name, factory location, SKU name, planned production (i.e. number of items to be produced), gross production, net production, agreed maximum losses, actual batch losses. The smart contract also includes a list of data series to use when labeling the items. Each data series (e.g. "ABC123") is coded BE2021/6041 using an appropriate data carrier printed on the item, as shown for example in Figures 3 and 4.

After the smart contract is created, the manufacturer now starts production of the goods (step S505). Each article is tagged according to the process shown in Figure 2, where a data carrier is printed on the article and then scanned to generate the digital ID for the article. In step S506, a batch report is generated containing details of each item produced and the digital IDs for those items. The information in the lot report is submitted to the blockchain, after which the smart contract is executed and a record of each item's digital ID is added to the blockchain. The manufacturer will also make a payment of the tax due for each of the items to the government agency. In some embodiments, the payment itself can be recorded on the blockchain in addition to each item's digital ID; however, it will be appreciated that storing the tax payment data on the blockchain itself is not essential, as long as the government agency has confirmation that payment has been received for that batch of items.

After the process described above, the tax status of each item can be easily checked as shown in Figures 6 and 7. In step S701, a user - e.g. a tax official - scans the data carrier on the item (in this case a bottle 601) using from a mobile device, such as a smartphone 603 for example. The officer can download on his device the same image processing application that is used to generate the bottle's digital ID at the point of production. By scanning the data carrier and processing the scan in the same way as described above in connection with Figure 4, the user can recreate the bottle's digital ID (step

S702). The digital ID can then be checked against the records stored on the blockchain (step S703). Since the digital ID will be unique to that bottle, and the records stored on the blockchain are immutable, a match between the digital ID obtained from the mobile device and a digital ID stored on the blockchain will serve as conclusive proof of identity of the bottle.

Figure 8 shows an example of how the digital ID can be used to distinguish properly taxed goods from other goods (e.g. counterfeit goods) for which no taxes are paid. Figure 8 BE2021/6041 shows an extract 801 of records stored on the blockchain by a bottled beverage manufacturer. Each record contains a code assigned to a particular bottle, together with the digital ID obtained for that bottle during production (the code here represents the sequence of characters encoded in the data carrier printed on the bottle in question ). Each bottle produced is given its own unique code by the producer, which means that there will always be a one-to-one relationship between the code and the digital ID. So no two digital IDs will be associated with the same code in the blockchain.

As in Figure 6, the user scans the data carriers on the two bottles 803, 805 to retrieve the code and regenerate the respective digital ID for each bottle. In this case, the data carrier printed on each bottle yields the same code ABC123, which means that at least one of those bottles is counterfeit.

By consulting the blockchain records, it can be seen that the code ABC 123 is associated with the digital ID 576946937636736036, which is the same digital ID obtained when scanning the second bottle 805. The first bottle 803, on the other hand, yields a different digital ID , which means that bottle has not been booked on the blockchain. Thus, the user can identify the second bottle 805 as a genuine product of the manufacturer in question (and whose tax status has been properly met), while the first bottle 803 is a counterfeit item for which no tax has been or will be paid.

Thus, the embodiments described herein provide the government and other authorities with a means of identifying goods and confirming that any tax on those goods has been properly paid by the manufacturer. The techniques described herein are compatible with existing inkjet printers currently used for labeling or can be quickly and easily integrated into existing production lines, for example during weekly maintenance breaks. It will be appreciated that, in addition to confirming the tax status of the goods, the methods described herein can be used more generally to confirm the origin of various goods and thus distinguish between genuine and counterfeit products.

It is further recognized that while in the embodiments described above the fingerprint is obtained by scanning the data carrier, this is not essential and that the fingerprint may be obtained by scanning another area of the article, provided that area contains sufficient spatial information | BE2021/6041 to distinguish the article in a unique way. The use of the data carrier as the basis for the fingerprint is nevertheless advantageous, because it makes it possible to retrieve the information encoded by the data carrier and generate the fingerprint at the same time. The use of the data carrier in itself can also simplify the process of checking the digital ID against the blockchain records. Since the code on the data carrier and the digital ID of the article in question will match one to one, a user can filter his search for the article based on the code; if the digital ID associated with that code matches that on the item to be examined, the user can confirm the identity of the item and its fiscal status.

Implementations of the subject matter and operations described in this specification may be realized in digital electronic circuits, or in computer software, firmware, or hardware, including the structures described in this specification and their structural equivalents, or in combinations of one or more of these. Implementations of the subject matter described in this specification may be accomplished using one or more — computer programs, i.e., one or more modules of computer program instructions encoded on a computer storage medium for execution by data processing equipment, or to control the operation thereof. Alternatively or additionally, the program instructions may be encoded on an artificially generated distributed signal, e.g. a machine generated electrical, optical or electromagnetic signal generated to encode information for transmission to appropriate receiving devices for execution by a data processing device. A computer storage medium may be or be incorporated into a computer readable storage medium, a computer readable storage substrate, an array or device for random or serial access to memory, or a combination of one or more of these media. While a computer storage medium is not a propagated signal, a computer storage medium can be a source or destination of computer program instructions encoded in an artificially generated propagated signal.

The computer storage medium may also be or be contained within one or more separate physical components or media (e.g., multiple CDs, disks, or other storage devices).

While certain embodiments have been described, these BE2021/6041 embodiments are presented by way of example only and are not intended to limit the scope of the invention.

After all, the new methods, devices and systems described herein can be developed in various forms; moreover, various omissions, substitutions and changes in the form of the methods and systems described herein may be made without departing from the spirit of the invention.

The appended claims and their equivalents are intended to cover those forms or modifications which come within the scope and spirit of the invention.

Claims (18)

Conclusions BE2021/6041 A method of identifying an article comprising: scanning an area of an article to obtain a fingerprint of the article, the fingerprint encoding a spatial profile of light and dark elements present in the area; generating, based on the spatial profile, a unique digital ID for the article; and storing the unique digital ID as a record on a blockchain hosted by a network of computing nodes. The method of claim 1, further comprising: receiving, by a third party, the article; scanning, by the third party, the area for reproducing the fingerprint and the digital ID; and comparing the digital ID to the blockchain record to confirm the item's identity. The method of claim 2, further comprising: receiving, by the third party, confirmation that a tax has been paid or is payable on an item having the unique digital ID; and based on the confirmation, identifying the item received as an item for which tax has been paid or payable. The method of claim 3, wherein the confirmation that the tax on the item has been paid is stored on the blockchain. A method according to any one of the preceding claims, comprising: printing a data carrier on the article, the data carrier encoding a data string used to label the article; and wherein scanning the area of the article comprises scanning the area comprising the data carrier, wherein the fingerprint encodes the spatial profile of light and dark elements present in the data carrier. A method according to claim 5, wherein the data carrier is printed by applying a plurality of ink drops to the article, the spatial profile being such as to distinguish between two data carriers encoding the same data sequence, but with variations in the size and /or positioning BE2021/6041 of the ink drops. A method according to claim 5 or 6, wherein the data string encoded by the data carrier comprises an alphanumeric string. A method according to any one of claims 5 to 7, wherein the data sequence encoded by the data carrier is stored on the blockchain in combination with the digital ID of the article. A method comprising: establishing a smart contract between two parties on a blockchain network, the smart contract specifying an agreement for a first of the parties to produce a batch of one or more items; producing the batch of one or more articles; for each item: scanning an area of the item to obtain a fingerprint of the item, the fingerprint encoding a spatial profile of light and dark elements present in the area; generating, based on the spatial profile, a unique digital ID for the article; and executing the smart contract by providing a batch report confirming the production of the items and the unique digital ID for each item, with each item's unique digital ID at the execution of the smart contract as a record on the blockchain is stored. The method of claim 9, further comprising: receiving, by the second of the parties, one of the produced articles; scanning, by the second of the parties, the area for reproducing the fingerprint and the digital ID; and comparing the digital ID to the blockchain record to confirm that the item belongs to the lot of items specified in the smart contract. The method of claim 10, further comprising: receiving, by the second of the parties, confirmation that a tax has been paid or must be paid for the lot of one or more BE2021/6041 items; based on the confirmation, identifying the received item as an item for which tax has been paid or is due. The method of claim 11, wherein the confirmation that the tax has been paid or must be paid is stored on the blockchain. A method according to any one of claims 9 to 12, comprising: for each article: printing a data carrier on the article, the data carrier encoding a data string used to label the article; and wherein scanning the area of the article comprises scanning the area comprising the data carrier, wherein the fingerprint encodes the spatial profile of light and dark elements present in the data carrier. A method according to claim 13, wherein the data carrier is printed by applying a plurality of ink drops to the article, the spatial profile being such as to distinguish between two data carriers encoding the same data sequence, but with variations in the size and /or the positioning of the ink drops. A method according to claim 13 or 14, wherein the data string encoded by the data carrier comprises an alphanumeric string. A method according to any one of claims 13 to 15, wherein the data sequence encoded by the data carrier is stored on the blockchain in combination with the digital ID of the item. A method according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein each article is a container for storing a beverage. A computer-readable storage medium comprising computer-executable instructions which, when executed by one or more computers, cause the one or more computers to perform the method according to any one of the preceding BE2021/6041 claims.