Classifications

• • B—PERFORMING OPERATIONS; TRANSPORTING
  • B42—BOOKBINDING; ALBUMS; FILES; SPECIAL PRINTED MATTER
  • B42D—BOOKS; BOOK COVERS; LOOSE LEAVES; PRINTED MATTER CHARACTERISED BY IDENTIFICATION OR SECURITY FEATURES; PRINTED MATTER OF SPECIAL FORMAT OR STYLE NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; DEVICES FOR USE THEREWITH AND NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; MOVABLE-STRIP WRITING OR READING APPARATUS
  • B42D25/00—Information-bearing cards or sheet-like structures characterised by identification or security features; Manufacture thereof
  • B42D25/30—Identification or security features, e.g. for preventing forgery
• • B—PERFORMING OPERATIONS; TRANSPORTING
  • B42—BOOKBINDING; ALBUMS; FILES; SPECIAL PRINTED MATTER
  • B42D—BOOKS; BOOK COVERS; LOOSE LEAVES; PRINTED MATTER CHARACTERISED BY IDENTIFICATION OR SECURITY FEATURES; PRINTED MATTER OF SPECIAL FORMAT OR STYLE NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; DEVICES FOR USE THEREWITH AND NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; MOVABLE-STRIP WRITING OR READING APPARATUS
  • B42D25/00—Information-bearing cards or sheet-like structures characterised by identification or security features; Manufacture thereof
• • B42D2033/16—
• • B42D2033/20—
• • B42D2033/28—
• • B42D2033/32—
• • B42D2035/02—
• • B42D2035/16—
• • B42D2035/20—
• • B42D2035/26—
• • B42D2035/34—
• • B42D2035/44—
• • B—PERFORMING OPERATIONS; TRANSPORTING
  • B42—BOOKBINDING; ALBUMS; FILES; SPECIAL PRINTED MATTER
  • B42D—BOOKS; BOOK COVERS; LOOSE LEAVES; PRINTED MATTER CHARACTERISED BY IDENTIFICATION OR SECURITY FEATURES; PRINTED MATTER OF SPECIAL FORMAT OR STYLE NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; DEVICES FOR USE THEREWITH AND NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; MOVABLE-STRIP WRITING OR READING APPARATUS
  • B42D25/00—Information-bearing cards or sheet-like structures characterised by identification or security features; Manufacture thereof
  • B42D25/30—Identification or security features, e.g. for preventing forgery
  • B42D25/318—Signatures
• • B—PERFORMING OPERATIONS; TRANSPORTING
  • B42—BOOKBINDING; ALBUMS; FILES; SPECIAL PRINTED MATTER
  • B42D—BOOKS; BOOK COVERS; LOOSE LEAVES; PRINTED MATTER CHARACTERISED BY IDENTIFICATION OR SECURITY FEATURES; PRINTED MATTER OF SPECIAL FORMAT OR STYLE NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; DEVICES FOR USE THEREWITH AND NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; MOVABLE-STRIP WRITING OR READING APPARATUS
  • B42D25/00—Information-bearing cards or sheet-like structures characterised by identification or security features; Manufacture thereof
  • B42D25/30—Identification or security features, e.g. for preventing forgery
  • B42D25/328—Diffraction gratings; Holograms

Definitions

• This invention relates to security documents, e.g. documents which are of value themselves, which represent value or which provide information of value.
• security documents e.g. documents which are of value themselves, which represent value or which provide information of value.
• the copying of such documents is, of course, of great interest to the forger, and strenuous efforts have been made for many -years to make the forger's task as difficult as possible.
• this invention relates to security documents in the form of plastics materials cards such as, for example, identity cards, bank cheque guarantee cards and credit cards (although the invention is not, of course, limited to such specific examples).
• a security document in the form of a plastics material card which carries a rainbow-printed design.
• the above card is preferably in the form of a laminar structure comprising a printed plastics core with plastics material on both surfaces of the core. Either or both of the core surfaces may bear rainbow printing and usually such printing will be in the form of close register fine line patterns.
• the fillets must form a very tight seal so that no intermixing occurs between adjacent inks in the duct, which would result in a progressive loss of colour purity.
• the press is then run in a conventional manner with the plate being inked, and the resultant image transferring successively to a rubber blanket and then to paper.
• the image appears on the paper not in one colour but in a series of bands of colour accros the printing width.
• the boundary between the bands is not a sharp colour change but a gradual transition from one colour to another over a width typically of 15 mm.
• the width of the transition area can be varied by a very fine adjustment of the oscillating roller incorporated in the ink train of the press, but the amount of oscillation must be kept small so as to prevent cross contamination of colour.
• the present invention is based upon the discovery that, provided the same adaptations to rainbow printing techniques (as they are normally applied to paper) are made in adapting normal printing techniques to printing on plastics materials, the use of rainbow printing techniques sets no impossible problems to the skilled man but can present the forger lacking such skills with real difficulties.
• the other factor is that quite simply credit or cheque card manufacturers have not thought of using techniques well known in the different art of paper security printing. It is this combination of disparate arts in a simple and unexpected way which lies at the core of the invention.
• the present invention is not restricted to bank cards or credit cards (indeed any security document involving authentication is appropriate in the present invention, e.g. identity cards, cash machine withdrawal cards, passes and the like, which is in plastics card form).
• credit cards and bank cheque guarantee cards are a very important application of the present invention and in both of these cases the card will generally carry a signature panel.
• This panel may itself carry printed items and these may be printed with solvent sensitive and/or erasable inks designed to show clearly any attempt at alteration or at erasure of the signature.
• the printing on the signature panel may also be rainbow printed, e.g. in the form of a micro-pattern design. It is preferred that the signature panel be a paper-based material permanently bonded to the card surface.
• a magnetic security area or strip may be incorporated on the card or, indeed, a plurality of such areas or strips.
• Machine readable coded information may be incorporated in this magnetised material in a manner well known in the art.
• the intaglio printing process has for many years been used as a security feature on paper documents such as banknotes.
• the process is simple: a plate is engraved by hand and/or machine; the engraving is filled with ink; paper is pressed against the plate and as the paper is peeled away the ink is removed from the engraving. Once the ink is dry it preserves a record of the engraving in terms of area, contour and depth.
• the resulting print can have a high level of security. This comes from:
• the signature strip is made of paper.
• the principal advantage of this is that the paper absorbs the ink of a signature and deletion becomes much more difficult. Since such paper strips are on the surface intaglio printing can be applied to part of the strip to enhance the security both of the card and of the strip.
• the invention includes cards thus modified.
• the strip is hot-press laminated to the plastic of the card and the intaglio print must withstand the heat and pressure involved. This means that the ink must not soften under heat and the pigments must not bleed or change colour under heat unless a controlled colour change under heat is used as an additional security feature.
• intaglio printing on a signature strip is, of course, limited by the space available but may incorporate a transitory or a "latent" image.
• intaglio- inked patterns are constituted by ink elements which are appreciably raised above the level of the surface bearing the printing. In other words, such elements have substantial depth.
• an intaglio printed pattern can be provided which includes at least one image area and a "background” area, individual pattern elements in the image area differing from pattern elements in the background area to produce a contrast between the image area and the background area as viewed from a first angle but with the contrast altering (or perhaps disappearing) as the angle of view alters. It is possible to achieve such effects, inter alia, where the contrast relates to respective pattern intensities or differing colouring depending upon the angle of view.
• This "latent image” effect and its production is described in full in British Patent Specification No. 1390302, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
• the provision of such printing on security documents in the form of plastics material cards is novel and inventive in its own right and provides a useful anti-forgery device for such cards.
• the tactile feel and visibility of the latent image can vary dramatically with the pressure and temperature conditions o lamination. It has been found that if high pressure is applied before the plastics material softens, the intaglio print loses much of its characteristics. This is because the plastics material takes up the contours of the intaglio print, despite the thickness of the paper. If the pressure is applied only after the plastics matetial is soft the resulting strip gives a greatly improved tactile feel and latent image visibility because the paper is pressed into the plastics material so as to be almost flat.
• the present security documents may also carry one or more holograms and reference is made to the report issued by American Bank Note Company in 1983 containing examples of such holograms and referring thereto.
• Holograms may be provided in the form of holographic image-bearing films mounted on individual foil carriers, each carrier being mounted on the plastics material card.
• the reader is also directed to British Patent Specification No. 2129739 dealing with another technique for using holograms, the contents of which specification are incorporated herein by reference.
• the present security documents may carry at least some printing in fluorescent inks invisible under ordinary lighting conditions.
• Hidden graphics may be included as a further security feature, e.g. printing may be incorporated which includes a word and/or sign which is of such a character that it signifies that the document when copies may not be genuine, both the word and/or the sign and surrounding area comprising a plurality of continuous lines, the lines forming the word and/or sign being at an angle to the lines forming the surrounding area and the width and spacing of the lines being selected so that the word and/or sign is not readily visible in the document but is readily visible in a copy of the document made on a copier employing a light source for scanning the document.
• printing may be incorporated which includes a word and/or sign which is of such a character that it signifies that the document when copies may not be genuine, both the word and/or the sign and surrounding area comprising a plurality of continuous lines, the lines forming the word and/or sign being at an angle to the lines forming the surrounding area and the width and spacing of the lines being selected so that the word and/or sign is not readily visible in the document but
• the present security documents may include a range of other security features.
• An example is the use of optical fibres through the card, possibly a plurality of fibres arranged in a specific pattern. Reference may be made, for example, to British Patent Specification No. 1319210, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
• Other examples are the use of fine white line patterning around any densely printed lettering or simple device printing, such as a bank identification device or name, and the use of a feature indicating that the card is void (perhaps a printed indication using the word "void" itself) if an attempt should be made to remove any signature panel present by the use of mechnical or solvent means.
• cards in accordance with the present invention are produced by methods standard in the art from thermoplastics materials which will permit heat embossing and/or hot pressing for the incorporation of, e.g. a signature strip and/or hologram.

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• Credit Cards Or The Like (AREA)
• Printing Methods (AREA)

Applications Claiming Priority (2)

Publications (2)

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ID=10554863

Family Applications (1)

Country Status (2)

Cited By (12)

Citations (5)

• 1984
  • 1984-01-12 GB GB848400746A patent/GB8400746D0/en active Pending
• 1985
  • 1985-01-11 EP EP85300216A patent/EP0149542A3/fr not_active Withdrawn

Patent Citations (5)

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