EP0128213A1

EP0128213A1 - Plastics card for security, identity or banking purposes

Info

Publication number: EP0128213A1
Application number: EP84900400A
Authority: EP
Inventors: John Albert Crew; Raymond Vian; Robert John Compton Locke; Bernd Rexroth
Original assignee: Bernd Rexroth GmbH and Co Ausweistechnik KG; Guardian Card Systems Ltd
Current assignee: Bernd Rexroth GmbH and Co Ausweistechnik KG; Guardian Card Systems Ltd
Priority date: 1982-12-15
Filing date: 1983-12-14
Publication date: 1984-12-19
Also published as: GB8420646D0; GB2141381A; WO1984002309A1

Abstract

Une carte plastique possède un substrat (10) avec un support d'encre (34) dans lequel est gravée une image. Un film transparent de protection (40) est laminé sur toute la surface supérieure de la carte. Le film (40) possède un motif d'encre (42) contrastant avec le support d'encre (34); il est ainsi possible de voir l'image à travers le motif d'encre de contraste (42). Une impression offset (18) sur la surface supérieure du substrat (10) comporte un motif en guillochis de sécurité formé de lignes fines qui est aligné avec le motif d'encre (42) lorsque le film (40) est en registre avec la carte.A plastic card has a substrate (10) with an ink support (34) in which an image is engraved. A transparent protective film (40) is laminated over the entire upper surface of the card. The film (40) has an ink pattern (42) contrasting with the ink carrier (34); it is thus possible to see the image through the contrast ink pattern (42). An offset print (18) on the upper surface of the substrate (10) has a security guilloche pattern formed of fine lines which is aligned with the ink pattern (42) when the film (40) is in register with the card .

Description

PLASTICS CARD FOR SECURITY, IDENTITY OR BANKING

PURPOSES This invention relates to cards on which identity information such as a signature and / or a photograph can be provided.

There is a growing need for such cards in which measures are taken to make the fraudulent forgery or alteration of the card difficult. One application is in chegue guarantee and credit cards issued by banks, who suffer losses of millions of pounds through the fraudulent use of such cards. There are other applications in the security industry for such identity cards. Increasingly, orgnized crime has moved into the forgery and alteration of such cards, with more sophisticated technical methods, e.g. for removing the signature and / or photograph on a card and replacing it with another.

UK Patent specification No. 1595898 shows a card made from laminated plastics sheets, having a panel of ink in which can be engraved an image, eg a photograph or signature. To make it more difficult to alter the engraved image, a second, contrasting ink layer is provided below the first. This shows through the first ink layer when an image is engraved, and it is difficult to remove the first ink layer without also disturbing the the second ink layer.

In one aspect, the present invention seeks to make a more secure card, and provides a plastics card having a substrate with a panel of ink in which an image can be engraved, and a transparent plastics film for lamination over the panel of ink, the film having an ink pattern printed thereon which contrasts with the ink panel, whereby when the film is laminated over the ink panel an image engraved therein can be seen through the contrasting ink pattern. The invention also provides a method of making a plastics card, in which a substrate with an engravable ink panel is taken, an image is engraved in the panel, and a transparent plastics film is laminated over the panel, the film having an ink pattern printed thereon which contrasts with the ink panel, the engraved image being visibϊe through the contrasting ink pattern. Preferably the contrasting ink panel is on the underside of the transparent film. Preferably there is an ink pattern on the substrates which is aigned with the pattern on the film when the card is finished.

In a second aspect, the present invention provides a plastics card, on one side at least of which there is a visible image, wherein a tactile pattern is embossed or debossed in the surface of said side of the card over the image and preferably over surrounding parts of the card so that the image is visible through the pattern. The tactile pattern can be applied by heat and pressure from a suitably embossed or debossed pattern plate, preferably while laminating a covering, protective plastics layer to the card. The tactile pattern is then formed in the outer surface of this protective layer. in the third aspect, the present invention provides a card having a hot foil security stamp over an image-bearing surface, produced by laying a foil (preferably a metallized foil, eg a metallized plastics foil) over the surface and pressing a heated, patterned stamp over it so that the foil transfers to the surface in the pattern of the stamp, characterized in that the pattern on the stamp is formed by a plurality of raised dots so that the pattern which transfers to the surface is correspondingly dotted.

A plastics card, intended for banking purposes, but also useful for other security and identity purposes, will now be described by way of example, with reference to the accompanying drawings, wherein:

1 is a cross-section through part of the card. 2 is a plan view of the card,

3 is a schematic view of a laminating press,

Fig. 4 is a detail from Fig. 3,

Figure 5 illustrates a hot foil stamping process, and

Figure 6 is a detail of a stamp used in Figure 5.

Referring to Fig. 1, the card is a laminate of a plurality of layers of polyvinyl chloride (PVC). For clarity, the thicknesses of the layers have been exaggerated in the Figure. The basic substrates comprises two layers 10, 12 of white, opague PVC, each about 260μ thick. These are clad by an upper layer 14 and a lower layer 16 of transparent PVC, each about 100 to 120μ thick. The upper surface of the layer 10 has offset litho printing 18 which will be discussed in more detail below. The lower surface of the layer 12 has offset litho printing 20, which is visible through the transparent layer 16, and which may include for example the conditions of use of the banking card. Between the two layers 10, 12 (on either of the layers) there is offset litho printing 22; this will not normally be visible, but provides a "watermark" pattern which can be seen when the card is held up to a strong light. Such a watermark makes the card harder to forge. The lower transparent layer 16 may have a stripe 24 of magnetic material, on which data can be encoded magnetically as is well known.

The offset printing 18 on the upper surface of the layer 10 includes the wording, symbols, etc. normally associated with such cards, as shown at 26 in Fig. 2. It may also include a symbol or pattern 28 screen or offset printed in an ink which reacts to ultra-violet or infra-red light. Such a symbol will show up under an appropriate lamp, and again makes forgery more difficult. Such a symbol may also be included on other parts of the card if desired, e.g. in the printing 20 on layer 12.

Also printed in the printing 18 is a security guilloche pattern of fine lines, which is applied over the entire surface of the card, up to boundary lines 30, and except within an area 32 denoted by dotted lines in Fig. 2. The guilloche pattern is again designed to be hard to forge, and is. best multi-colored. It is particularly advantageous if the guilloche pattern has a "rainbow" effect of stripes of colors merging into each other; such an effect can only be produced on a specialist offset printing machine to which forgers are unlikely to have access.

The printing of the guilloche pattern should desirably result in about 59% of the surface area of the card being left free of ink. If there is more ink than this, we have found that the lamination of the various layers can be impaired, making it less difficult for the card to be taken apart for fraudulent alteration. Less ink than this can be used, but obviously the more cömplicated and hard to forge the guilloche pattern is made, the more ink area will in general be reguired to produce it. The guilloche pattern (and indeed, other printed matter on the card) is desirably printed in a fugitive ink, that is, one which runs if the card is attacked with solvents or other cliemical agents, leaving clear evidence of the tampering which has taken place . If desired, an area of the card (other than the area 32) can be left blank, without the guilloche printing. Chemical or solvent attack tends to discolour the PVC material, and such discolouration is clearly visible in such a blank area.

Within the guilloche-free area 32, the transparent layer 14 is screen-printed with one or more solid ink panels 34 (Fig. 1), in black or another dark color which contrasts with the guilloche printing. In Fig. 2, these are shown as a photograph panel 34a and a signature panel 34b. The card is manufactured by laminating together the layers 10, 12, 14, 16 which have been pre-printed as described above, to produce a blank of the form seen in Fig. 2 in which a white margin 36 surrounds the guilloche-printed area 30. In the process, the upper surface of the card, including the ink panel 34, is press-polished so as to be engravable. Such blanks are of course larger than the finished card, which will be cut out on the line 38 after the various processes described below. These blanks are supplied in bulk by the manufacturer to the customer, eg a bank, together with a supply of protective foils 40 (Fig. 1) described in more detail below.

The bank or other customer has to place on each card information relating to an individual cardholder. To do this, they use an engraving machine of known type, to engrave in the presspolished panels 34a, 34b respectively a photograph and a reproduction of the signature of the cardholder, from Originals supplied by him. Obviously, one or other of these items of information could be omitted if desired. A suitable engraving machine is that produced by Dr.-Ing. Rudolf Hell GmbH, of Postfach 6229, D-2300 Kiel 14, West Germany. The engraving machine has an engraving tool which scans the panel 34, stopping regularly to remove a dot of the ink of the panel. The depth of the engraving of each dot into the layer 14 depends on the intensity of the original image (photograph or signature) at the corresponding point, and the greater the depth, the larger area of ink is removed. The result is a half-tone reproduction of the original image in the ink panel 34, since the dark color of the remaining ink contrasts with the white card below. Such machines generally scan the image and the ink panel transversely, one line at a time. They can be set either to index in the direction perpendicular to the scanning at the end of each line, ready for the next; or to have a small continuous motion in the perpendicular direction throughout the scanning, so that each line of dots in the resulting image is at a very slight slant. Preferably, indexed perpendicular motion is used in the signature panel 34b, and continuous motion in the photograph panel 34a. The difference is not great, but can be detected in the resulting images, and makes the task of the forger a little more difficult.

The next step is to laminate a protective, transparent PVC foil 40 to the card, over the entire top surface. These foils are about 100 to 120μ thick and supplied to the bank cut to exactly the same size as the card blanks. On their undersurface is a layer of offset printing 42. This is a continuation of the guilloche pattern of the printing layer 18, and is provided only above the unprinted area 32 thereof. It is carefully printed so that when the foil 42 is in register with the rest of the card (which is easily arranged since they are the same size) the guilloche pattern 42 exactly matches that of the printing layer 18. Thus it will be imperceptible that the guilloche pattern is printed on different layers of the finished card. It will be noticed that the pattern 42 covers the ink panels 34a, 34b and a small area around them. The guilloche pattern will be clearly visible in the white parts of the half-tone image, since it is in a color or colors which contrast with both the white background and the dark ink 34. Once the protective foil 40 is laminated over the card, therefore, it will be impossible to tamper with the engraved images without noticeably disturbing the guilloche pattern. This is a considerable improvement over merely having the guilloche or another contrasting ink layer beneath the ink panel 34, but in some aspects of the invention at least that too is a possibility. It is also possible, if desired, for the guilloche pattern to be provided only in the printing layer 42 which can then extend over the entire card, and for the printing layer 18 to be confined to the non-guilloche matter conventionally provided on such cards.

It is also possible that fine guilloche pattern in printing layer 18 extends over entire surface, including area

32 below ink panel 34. Likewise, fine line guilloche pattern

42 extends over entire undersurface of foil 40, and is arranged exactly in reg ister with pattern 18.

Fig. 3 shows schematically the lamination of the foil 40 to the rest of the blank, designated 44 in this Figure. Several blanks 44 (eg five) are loaded into a press 46, each with a foil 40 aiigned above it and a stainless steel plate 48 above that. The press 46 is made the correct size to fit the blanks and foils, to facilitate alignment of the foils above their respective blanks. It will be appreciated that in the Figure, the thickness direction has again been exaggerated for clarity. After loading, a pressure plate 50 presses down on the blanks, foils and plates 48. The pressure plate is electrically heated, and so is also the bottom 52 of the press. The heat and pressure cause each foil 40 to be laminated permanently to its respective blank. The intermediate plates 48 not only serve to keep the several cards in the press separated. Their undersides are etched with a recessed pattern as shown at 54. The depth of this pattern is quite small - less than the thickness of the foil 40. When the foil is laminated to the blank, the clear plastics material of which it is formed will flow into the recesses 54, and the pattern will thus be transferred, in an embossed form, to the top surface of the resulting laminated card. The pattern thus formed will not be such as to interfere significantly with the legibility of the card, but it can very easily be feit by running a finger across the surface, and it is also visible. If the card is tampered with, it will be necessary for the criminal to destroy this tactile surface, and it will be very difficult indeed for him to reproduce the surface afterwards. The pattern is suitably of a trade mark nature, and can be a small pattern which is repeated at regular intervals across the whole upper surface of the card. Alternatively, it can be repeated at irregular intervals, making it even harder to reproduce accurately. Instead of being embossed, it can be debossed, by etching the plate 48 to have a projecting pattern instead of a recessed one. The overall tactile effect is similar. If desired, the patterns could be provided only areas likely to be tampered with, such as the panels 34a, 34b, but it is both more secure and more aesthetically pleasing to have them over the whole card surface. It is of course possible to provide a continuous lamination process which produces the tactile surface, in place of the batch process described above.

The next stage of the card production process is preferably to hot stamp a foil pattern 55 (Fig. 2) over part of the top surface of the card - desirably at least partially over one or both ink panels 34a, 34b. Such a process is well known, and is illustrated in Fig. 5. It normally involves laying a suitable foil 56 (eg of metallized plastics) over the top surface 44 of the card 40, and pressing down a hot stamp 58 having a desired pattern over it. This causes the metallized foil to transfer permanently to the surface of the card, but only in the shape of the desired pattern. The remaining foil just lifts away. It is desirable that there should be no tactile pattern in the area to be hot stamped. The metallized foil 56 may, if desired, be pre-shaped to a desired pattern, before the hot stamping step. We have devised a more secure improvement of this method. As before, the hot stamp has a desired pattern, but instead of being a solid block of this pattern, it comprises a large number of projecting needles 60 which have flat end faces for stamping. The result when this stamp is used is that the desired foil pattern left on the card is not solid, but of a dotted appearance. By appropriately spacing the needles 60, the dot pattern can be regular or irregular.

Either is difficult for the criminal to forge or replace; an irregular pattern somewhat more so. Any attack on the card in order to alter it will inevitably cause damage to the hot foil stamp ing.

Finally, the card undergoes a number of conventional finishing steps. It is cut out along the line 38 in Fig. 2; the magnetic stripe 24 is magnetically coded as required; and data such as the cardholder's name, a serial number for the card and a bank code number are embossed in it. It shall be noted this embossing step is quite different from the production of the tactile surface, since the entire plastic laminate is deformed from below, to a much greater height. Such embossing is of course at a position remote from other images on the card, since it would tend to destroy any other images.

Claims

Claims:

1. Plastics cards for security, identity or banking purposes, having a Substrate (10) with a panel of ink (34) in which an image (34a, 34b) can be engraved, and a transparent plastics film (40) for lamination over said panel of ink, said film having an ink pattern (42) printed thereon contrasting with said ink panel, whereby when said film is laminated over said ink panel an image engraved therein can be seen through said contrasting ink pattern.

2. Plastics card according to Claim 1, wherein said contrasting ink pattern (42) is on the underside of said transparent film (40).

3. Plastics card according to Claims 1 or 2, wherein an ink pattern (18) is on said Substrate being aiigned with said pattern (42) on said film (40) when the card is finished.

4. Plastics card according to least to Claim 3, wherein said ink pattern (18) on said Substrate (10) and said pattern (42) on said film (40) is a security guilloche pattern of fine lines.

5. Plastics card according to Claim 4, wherein said ink pattern (18) on said Substrate (10) is applied over the entire surface of said card.

6. Plastics card for security, identity or banking purposes with a visible image on one side at least of said plastics card preferably according to Claim 1, wherein a tactile pattern is embossed or debossed in the surface of said side (40) of said plastics card over said image (34a, 34b), and preferably over surrounding parts of said card so that the image is visible through said pattern.

7. Plastics card according to Claim 6, wherein said tactile pattern is applied by heat and pressure from a suitably embossed or debossed pattern plate (48), preferably while laminating a covering, protective plastics layer (40) to said card.

8. Plastics card having a hot foil security stamp over an image-bearing surface, produced by laying a foil over said surface and pressing a heated, patterned stamp over it so that said foil transfers to said surface in the pattern of said stamp, preferably according to Claim 1, characterized in that said pattern on said stamp (58) is formed by a plurality of raised dots (60) so that said pattern transferring to said surface is correspondingly dotted.

9. Plastics card for security, identity or banking purposes, having a Substrate (10) with a panel of ink (34) in which an image (34a, 34b) can be engraved, a transparent plastics film (40) for lamination over said panel of ink, said film having an ink pattern (42) printed thereon contrasting with said ink panel, whereby when said film is laminated over said ink panel an image engraved therein can be see through said contrasting ink pattern, in said transparent plastics film a tactile pattern is embossed or debossed over said image, and a hot foil security stamp (55) over said image-bearing surface, produced by laying a foil (56) over said plastics film and pressing a heated, patterned stamp (58) over it, said stamp being formed by a plurality of raised dots (60).

10. A method of making a plastics card according to at least Claim 1, in which a Substrate with an engravable ink panel is taken, an image is engraved in said panel, and a transparent plastics film is laminated over said panel, said film having an ink pattern printed thereon contrasting with said ink panel, said engraved image being visible through said contrasting ink pattern.