Anticounterfeiting technology patent round-up

SecuringPharma.com's periodic round-up of recent patent awards in the area of anti-counterfeiting technologies at the US Patents and Trademarks Office (USPTO) includes news from Illumina, CCL Ltd, Hewlett-Packard, OptoTrace and Silverbrook.

- San Diego, USA-based Illumina Inc has been granted US Patent No. 7,619,819 entitled Method and apparatus for drug product tracking using encoded optical identification elements. The technology relies on the use of diffraction grating-based encoded optical identification elements, and can be applied to a range of purposes, including "sorting, tracking, identification, verification, authentication, anti-theft/anti-counterfeit, security/anti-terrorism," says the patent. The labelling technique provides the capability of providing more than 1 million codes, can be made very small and flexible, and can withstand harsh environments.

- CCL Ltd, a US company based in Upland, California, has been granted US Patent No. 7,594,348 entitled Security label and covering a label particularly adapted for pharmaceutical containers to provide "an irreversible indication of tampering." The aim is to solve the problem of labels being removed from a genuine product and affixed to a counterfeit. While a number of manufacturers have developed labels that are destroyed on removal, this patent covers a security label that can be easily removed from a container, and provides an irreversible indication of removal or tampering so that it cannot be reused.

- Computer giant Hewlett-Packard has been awarded US Patent No. 7,581,242 - Authenticating products - using a method based on a description of detectable features read from a package. "The package includes two or more detectable features, and the detectable features are affixed on the package based on encoded information," according to the patent. "Authentication information is provided based on a comparison of the received description to one or more stored package identifiers," it continues.

- US-Chinese company OptoTrace Technologies has been granted US Patent No. 7,576,854 - entitled Arrays of nano structures for surface-enhanced raman scattering - which covers instrumentation and methods for a range of pharmaceutical applications, including counterfeit screening. The technology described in the patent concerns apparatus and methods of enhancing the sensitivity of SERS.

- Australia's Silverbrook Research, which has been steadily building a patent estate in the anti-counterfeiting arena, has been awarded US Patent No. 7,565,542 entitled Remote authentication of an object using a signature part. The patent covers a method of authenticating an object based on "indicating data ... generated in response to sensing of coded data provided on or in a surface associated with [an] object." The patent indicates the surface coding approach could serve as an alternative to barcoding and radiofrequency identification (RFID) for unique product indentification in the pharmaceutical sector.


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Anticounterfeiting technology patent round-up