SK500612017U1 - Method for authentication of consumer goods - Google Patents

Abstract

The Consumer Goods Authentication Method consists in creating digital information prototypes of printing forms, at least one of which includes digital images of a transparent color masking pattern (5), a set of printing forms is formed which includes at least one form for printing said transparent colors masking patterns (5), wherein each trademark image (4) is applied to a light reflecting pad (2) and said masking pattern (5) is applied to each trademark image (4).

Description

The technical solution relates to technologies which allow each end-user to authenticate consumer goods delivered to the market as a single piece of goods or as small sets (usually taken in one hand) in flexible packaging.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Normally, the products shall be authenticated by affixing accompanying documents to the whole batch of goods, the said documents containing at least the name of the manufacturer, the type of goods, the batch number and the number of products therein.

Unfortunately, such documents are virtually inaccessible to end-users of individual products who buy them in retail.

Stickers or labels specifying the type and name of the goods as well as manufacturer information are used to authenticate the various goods.

However, the production and affixing of stickers or labels are associated with substantial material, financial and time-consuming costs and are therefore justified only where the cost of such expenditure is small. It would be obvious even for non-specialists that in the retail trade of the above-mentioned consumer goods, the use of such stickers and labels would practically be excluded.

It is also impractical from an economic, organizational and technical perspective to authenticate such goods using the following exotic and working means:

- ferromagnetic check marks applied to goods and their packaging (RU 2276409) or trade marks made of coding multicolored compositions with active components of intersecting hatching (RU 2254354);

- unique 'digital stamps' or 'serialization codes' programmable in descending order and applied to the goods or their packaging (RU 2225032 or RU 2216776);

- encrypted and digitally signed unique afanumeric identifiers according to US 2011/0093113 A1;

- high frequency labels inserted in stickers or packages of goods, ie. j. microchips, each of which has a transponder with a built-in antenna and is a unique identifier medium (EA 011785).

In all such cases, authentication is performed by comparing the identifier received from the remote database with the identifier applied to the product or package. Naturally, it makes no sense to create such databases for confectionery, chewing gum and other similar bulk products.

Individual two-dimensional (2D) barcodes are often created for excise goods, which are printed on bottle stickers and cigarette packs and on cigarette packs. (Technical methods counteracting the trading of counterfeit and counterfeit production), Hain-Information (Information Magazine), 3ainrnra m (Information Protection, Aluminum, , Inside) No. 6, 2007, Tents 40-51).

However, the use of such barcodes to authenticate the aforementioned consumer goods is virtually impossible.

Finally, for such consumer goods, the use of control holograms individually manufactured and subsequently applied to each product or its packaging prior to delivery to the distribution network is also practically excluded (httm / 7drLikarstvo.coni / drtik-holohrann

Therefore, the authenticity of consumer goods is still confirmed only by the application of the trade mark of the manufacturing company to each individual flexible packaging. Any conventional printing method may be used for this purpose (see Article ΠοϋΠΓρ3φηΉ (Polygraphy) in EojnionionHIHKíonc ^ imieciHn cjioBapB nOJIHTEXHHTECKHH (Moscow Encyclopedia Dictionary POLYTECHNICAL), Moscow, publ. CoBeTcKion 3 thematically related articles). This closest prior art provides the method proposed below:

producing at least one matrix as an analogue information prototype of the printing form;

- producing at least one printing form with a mirror image of the printed image and / or text (in particular the trade mark);

attaching the printing form (usually a set of printing forms in the order of application of the ink layers) to a rotary printing machine; and

in-lme printing the selected image and / or text on a roller-fed information carrier (in particular, flexible packaging material).

In the case of black and white printing, it may sometimes be sufficient to create a single printing form, while for color printing a set of printing forms equal to the number of colors used is created and secured sequentially on the rollers of the printing machine. It is customary for the printing form used to make copies of the trade mark which contains the

SK 50061-2017 U1, the number of its mirror images is equal to the number of flexible envelopes covered by the printed images per revolution of the corresponding roller of the rotary printing machine.

The method described provides an effective replication of any trade mark on any such type of flexible packaging for consumer goods that forms part of a long strip of flexible packaging material.

However, the flexible packaging materials and the flexible packaging made from them are used not only by the legal holders of the trade marks but also by the manufacturers of counterfeit consumer goods. Therefore, the challenge of creating highly productive and economic ways of authenticating consumer goods remains critical.

Definitions

The terms used herein have the following meanings:

- 'consumer goods' means the following products (mainly food):

- confectionery such as individual sweets, cakes, gingerbread, etc .;

- individual portions of instant coffee, sugar, milk (including condensed milk), cream and other milk products, fruit and vegetable juices, etc .;

- confectionery, chewing gum, refreshing tablets, vitamin tablets, etc .;

- tea, coffee, cocoa, yerba mate, nuts, seeds, factory-made corn buds, medicinal plants, etc .;

- 'flexible packaging' means packaging and, in particular, sealed single and multi-chamber bags made of flexible packaging materials;

- 'flexible packaging material' means at least a two-layer wound material based on polymeric film, plated polymeric film, laminated paper, metal foil and any combination thereof, constituting a set of blanks for flexible packaging and supplied as such to consumer goods manufacturers.

The essence of the technical solution

The technical solution is based on the task of creating a method of authenticating consumer goods by changing the order of production and use of printing forms, which method would provide a highly productive in-line application of trademarks and pseudoholograms to all flexible packaging blanks in the final phase of manufacturing flexible packaging materials. use.

The task was solved by a method of authenticating consumer goods, which includes:

- creation of information prototypes of printing forms, of which at least one defines the image of the trade mark,

producing a set of such printing forms for a rotary printing machine, wherein at least one of said printing forms comprises a mirror image of a trademark; in a number equal to the number of flexible envelopes covered by the images per revolution of the corresponding cylinder of the printing machine,

subsequently affixing the printing forms to the rollers of said machine in the order of application of the ink layers, and

- in-line printing of images of the selected trade mark on roll-fed flexible packaging material,

- according to the technical solution,

- digital information prototypes of printing forms shall be created, at least one of which shall contain digital images of a transparent color masking pattern,

- a set of printing forms is created which contains at least one form for printing said transparent color-masking patterns,

each image of the mark shall be applied to a light - reflecting backing, and

- said masking pattern is applied to each image of the mark.

Masking patterns can be designed using generally available software (such as Photoshop). When finished, they are semi-transparent pseudo-alcohol grams which allow the trademarks to be distinguished only in bright light under certain points of view. The wide range of such pseudoholograms is virtually infinite, allowing for timely response to attempts to falsify them. Because the creation and printing of pseudoholograms is included in the in-line printing process, their use does not substantially affect the productivity and manufacturing cost of flexible packaging materials.

The first additional difference is that a material selected from the group consisting of metal foil, plated polymer foil and the ink colors "Mirror Gold" and "Mirror Silver" is used as a light reflecting mat. Such materials are generally available.

A second additional difference is that the transparent color masking pattern is formed from at least two printing inks of different colors. Makes trademark protection more effective with pseudoholograms.

SK 50061-2017 U1

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The essence of the invention is described below by means of a detailed description of said method with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:

Figure 1 is a cross-sectional view of a strip of flexible packaging material that corresponds to a single flexible packaging with a trademark applied thereto and a pseudo-graphic color masking pattern (substantially enlarged; a variant using a solid metal or plated coating of flexible packaging as a light reflecting substrate) ;

Figure 2 is the same as Figure 1 (using a separately applied mirror substrate as a light reflecting substrate);

Figures 3 and 4 are real illustrations of the authentication of consumer goods with protective characters.

Examples of technical solution

Regardless of specific technical means of implementation, the proposed method of authentication of goods provides:

(1) providing a set of digital information prototypes of printing forms optionally comprising at least one trademark image 4 in digital form and at least one transparent color masking image 5 in digital form;

(2) producing a set of such printing forms for a rotary printing machine, at least one of which contains mirror images of the trademark image 4 in a number equal to the number of flexible wrappers covered by the trademark images 4 per revolution of the corresponding roll of the printing machine; comprising a corresponding number of transparent color masking images 5;

(3) subsequently affixing the printing forms to the rollers of said machine in the order of application of the ink layers;

(4) internally printing the selected trademark on the roll-fed flexible packaging material 1, which has at least in the regions where the trademarks are located a light-reflecting pad 2; and (5) applying said transparent masking pattern 5 to each image 4 of the trademark. The method can be carried out on rotogravure or flexographic printing machines.

Figures 1 and 2 show:

at least a two-layer flexible packaging material 1, the lower portion serving as the inner layer of the flexible containers, which is the insert with respect to the packaged products, and the upper portion acting as a carrier of product information, its manufacturer, shelf life, etc .;

- a light reflecting pad 2, which may consist of:

a rigid topsheet of flexible wrapping material 1, as shown in Figure 1, made either of metal (usually aluminum) foil or metallized; or

- a polishing ink spot such as "Mirror Gold" or "Mirror Silver" as shown in Figure 2;

- a layer 3 of white color applied to the top of the flexible packaging material 1 having windows for printing the two elements described below, the trademark image 4 and the transparent color masking image 5 applied thereto, which serves as a protective pseudohologram and is formed by at least one printing ink, preferably at least two inks of different colors applied in succession.

Each layer of the masking pattern 5 represents a plurality of irregularly spaced dots ("noise"), the coordinates of each defining an easily alterable algorithm. In practice, to produce a masking pattern 5, it is wise to use the standard inks of the four primary colors: cyan, magenta, yellow and black, which can be taken in any combination and in any sequence.

It will be apparent to one skilled in the art to facilitate understanding of the concept of the invention that both Figures 1 and 2 are presented with magnification and distortion of the scale and the printed image 4 of the marks and applied masking images 5 does not produce any palpable or visible relief on the flexible surface. packaging material L

It is clear from Figures 3 and 4 how consumers can distinguish the trademarks of legal holders under protective pseudohokigms and verify the authenticity of purchased consumer goods.

Claims (3)

PROTECTION REQUIREMENTS 1. A method of authenticating consumer goods, comprising: producing information prototypes of printing forms of which at least one defines a trademark image (4), producing a set of such printing forms for a rotary printing machine, at least one of said printing forms comprising a mirror image of the trademark equal to the number of flexible packages coated images (4) of the trade mark per revolution of the corresponding roll of the printing machine, subsequently affixing the printing forms to the rolls of said machine in the order of application of the paint layers, and in-line printing the images (4) of the selected trademark onto the roll fed packaging material (1) , characterized in that: creating digital information prototypes of printing forms of which at least one comprises digital images of transparent color masking patterns (5), creating a set of printing forms comprising at least one form for printing said transparent color masking patterns (5), each image (4) the trade mark is applied to the light-reflecting substrate (2); and said masking pattern (5) is applied to each image (4) of the mark. Method according to claim 1, characterized in that the material of the light reflecting mat (2) is selected from the group consisting of a metal foil, a metallized polymer foil and a light reflecting printing ink. Method according to claim 1 or 2, characterized in that the transparent color masking pattern (5) is formed from at least two inks of different color.