Undoubtedly, a key challenge facing brand owners globally is the rise and advancements in counterfeiting and fake products. As emerging markets such as India, China, Eastern Europe, Latin America and South East Asia become more affluent, their populations develop a taste for world-famous branded products. Nike, Calvin Klein, Rolex, Gucci, Apple, etc., are all highly desired, and if people cannot afford to purchase the authentic products, there soon becomes a ready market for counterfeits. Globally, lost revenues due to counterfeiting are now said to be approaching US$1.4 billion a year.

Typically carried out by organized crime using high technology to keep up with the latest brand-protection solutions, today's counterfeiting forges the entire product and its packaging and labeling. Or it might re-use genuine packs and labels with counterfeit products. It might be taking out-of-date or rejected products and re-packaging them in fake containers. Or it might employ unauthorized, look-alike or registered brand names with a counterfeit product.

The result: There is little point in adding one anti-counterfeit technology onto a package or label as an afterthought. The counterfeiters probably already know how to simulate the anti-counterfeit features and can produce “genuine-looking” fake goods on sale within days.

The answer for the brand owner and label converter/printer is to work together right from the very beginning to build one or more anti-counterfeiting and/or brand-protection technologies into the original package design, and, where possible, combine a number of different methods to provide the most effective overall solution. Whatever technologies are used, they need to be changed on a frequent basis to keep ahead of the Bad Guys.

A range of existing and new anti-counterfeit/authentication solutions that can be built into labels and packages if carried out from the very beginning. These include a variety of security substrates incorporating biocodes, microtaggants or fluorescent/luminescent features. In addition, special iridescent, photochromic and color-change ink solutions, black-light varnishes, as well as complex security designs, backgrounds and microtext images all work well. Security printing and converting features in this area: raised images, security cuts and hologram inserting.

If possible, each label or package needs to be unique via sequential coding, numbering or marking—something which is now becoming easier to achieve with digital printing, DNA marking or laser encryption. Then, there is the use of optically variable devices (OVDs) and various 2D, 3D, hologram, security-foiling and color-shift images. Another recent brand-protection development is the application of smart, smart active and intelligent labels—including RFID-tagging and even the use of mobile phones and the Internet—to authenticate labels and packages remotely.

Labelexpo Americas 2008 will devote an entire day of conference sessions on Sept. 11 to security and brand protection. (See the detailed list on page 28). From a look at one brand owner's tactics in protecting its equity and consumers to a view of the entire system to safeguard Intellectual Property, these briefings are organized by production-workflow: substrates to prepress, press and converting. A dual focus will be applied to suit conventional-, digital- and hybrid-printing production workflows. Rounding off the discussions, a panel of leading converters will participte in a Q&A session to share their views and experiences with peers.

44/20-8846-2700, mfairley@labelling.fsnet.co.uk