Years ago, people may have associated the word "counterfeit" with a seedy-looking character selling designer goods under his trench coat. Today, the scope of counterfeiting rings has gone beyond the knock-off Louis Vitton bags, Gucci purses and Rolex watches—though that has not stopped either.

On March 2, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided a Vernon, CA, warehouse, and seized 350 cases of Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards, the largest cache ever recovered. Officials at Upper Deck (Carlsbad, CA), the company licensed to distribute the cards, said the cards seized would retail for almost $3 million if they were genuine. The ring was discovered when a vendor in downtown Los Angeles offered to sell an ICE undercover agent 250 boxes of counterfeit cards for $36,000.

"What makes this case so compelling is that the potential victims were children," says Steve Lovett, the supervisory special agent who oversees ICE's trade fraud unit in Los Angeles.

Is there anything or anyone safe from counterfeiting? This $350 billion industry continues to grow, destroying the brand reputation of legitimate companies and potentially putting consumers of any age at risk. "This threat runs the spectrum from an inferior product being produced under your brand name, to a consumer being injured by a product that was pirated," says Chad Harlan, director of marketing at MPI Label Systems (Sebring, OH). "That means the hard work and money that you have put into building your brand and/or company is put in serious jeopardy by someone trying to steal your ideas."

Product makers and converters are currently amid a sea of choices for brand protection—from glow-in-the-dark inks to radio frequency identification (RFID). One of the chief ways they are protecting products is through holograms. For example, HoloSECURE security paper by PROMA Technologies (Franklin, MA) was used to create admission passes for the July 2004 Democratic National Convention.

To make the pass, a custom 2D/3D holographic design was created, which was then printed by Globe Ticket and Label (Warminster, PA) onto the HoloSECURE paper with four colors on one side and two on the reverse. The passes then went through another operation for numbering. An additional layer of authentication was added to the substrate in the form of a proprietary covert security taggant supplied by Stardust Technologies, Inc. (Bellevue, WA). Security called for many different categories of passes to be printed with elaborate color coding, requiring more than 100 plate changes. Once completed, the tickets could be verified by inserting them into a customized infrared detection device that verified them based on the presence or absence of the taggant.

Security personnel were present throughout the process, and waste was not allowed to leave the venue until the convention ended.

"It's relatively expensive to produce custom holograms, and they often have large minimum order quantities," Harlan says. "Therefore it comes down to (return on investment) and how much the customer is willing to spend in order to protect their product." And not all companies are willing to spend the money for custom holograms. At the same time, not all products warrant expensive, multilayered holograms either.

Like the counterfeited Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards, industry experts are finding more low-end products being imitated. "Now, there's getting to be more of a need for a lower-cost hologram to protect those low-end products," says J. Michael Rivera, vp-sales for AMAGIC Holographics (Perkio-menville, PA).

Manufacturers and converters have a vast array of authentication products to choose from. Having to decide between holograms, security inks to interwoven messages on board and paper, the options may seem endless. "The biggest decision is actually what level of security feature do you want to apply, and that's, of course, driven by price," Rivera says.

The lowest level of holographic protection would be standard patterns like stars, cracked ice or bubbles. These types are usually used for low-end products. The next level, about 10 to 20 percent more expensive, is a hologram that contains a generic wording such as "secure" or "genuine." The next rung on the protection ladder would contain a custom image—a company logo; the next level up would use microtext, and the highest level would use a transparent holographic film.

Typically a silver-backed substrate is used for holograms. With such film, about 70 to 80 percent of the image in the hologram could be captured through a scanner, Rivera says. With a transparent holographic film, only 20 to 30 percent of the image can be captured. The extra measure of transparent holographic film is needed because, unfortunately, holograms can be counterfeited as well.

Although not a major issue because constructing holograms is a hefty monetary drain on a counterfeiter's operation, many manufacturers are not taking chances.

This is because holograms are sometimes more than just an authenticity seal. Because of their eye-catching nature, holograms are also used for brand recognition or point-of-purchase appeal. For example, the Nike power distance golf balls had a hologram on the box, which was specific to that box. The year before, Nike produced the Mojo golf ball, which had an entirely different hologram on the box. These holograms, however, were printed on the same film—LumBrite™ U6E polyester film by Toray Plastics (America), Inc. (North Kingstown, RI)—which is directly embossable.

"The leap towards really putting a brand-protection hologram on a package and combining it with decorative (uses) is not really there yet, but it's going to happen, and it's going to happen short term," says Eric Bartholomay, product development manager at Toray. "Pharmaceuticals, a generation ago, were just plain bottles that were kept on a shelf. There was no concept of point-of-purchase appeal. But there's been a whole evolution in the way pharmaceuticals, even prescription pharmaceuticals, are marketed where now brand image as well as security is an issue. So, one would think we're going to see more and more of that in the coming months."

Holograms, unlike RFID, can provide both brand authentication and brand recognition. The holographic image of Jerry West on all National Basketball Assn. paraphernalia not only tells the consumer that the product is by the NBA but that it's also authentic. "The hologram is still the most commonly used security device out there because most consumers see that if you have a hologram, it's authentic," Rivera says. "Most consumers don't look for microtext or anything like that. They just see a hologram, and they see it's authentic, and that's it."