RFID and AIDC News: Northwestern University Researchers Claim Breakthrough in Invisible Inks to Thwart Counterfeiting

Researchers and brand companies have been chasing the use of various types of invisible inks to thwart counterfeiting for more than two decades. SCDigest editor Dan Gilmore, for example, says he was tangentially connected to a research project on invisible inks for product verification led by the well-known Battelle Institute in Columbus, OH in the mid-1990s, and research has continued on ever since.
Each application of the ink can be made with a custom formula known only to the producer, which makes it especially hard to copy and suitable for precise identification techniques.
In fact, the idea to identify true goods from counterfeit ones goes back at least until the 13th century, when watermarks were invented to authenticate original documents. Ever since then, printers and forgers/counterfeiters have been in an arms race to out-do each other.

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