Method of and system for authenticating an item
AssigneeHewlett-Packard Development Company, L. P.
InventorsGuy Adams, Stephen Pollard
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method of authenticating the identity of an item bearing or associated with a printed security marker, the method comprising: a. printing the security marker with a pattern that encodes at least one of a unique product identifier, a batch identifier, and positional information about a portion of the marker; b. scanning and storing an image of the security marker as printed, said image being taken at sufficiently high resolution to capture artifacts of the printing process; and authentication steps comprising: c. imaging a portion of the marker at sufficiently high resolution to capture the artifacts, and d. querying a data store by providing the image of the portion of the marker or a compressed or parameterized version of the image and data derived from the pattern.
Claims22
A method of authenticating the identity of an item associated with a printed security marker, the method comprising:
- a. printing the security marker with a pattern that encodes at least one of a unique product identifier, a batch identifier, and positional information about a portion of the marker;
- b. scanning and storing an image of the security marker as printed, said image being taken at sufficiently high resolution to capture artefacts of the printing process;
- and authentication steps comprising:
- c. imaging a portion of the marker at sufficiently high resolution to capture the artefacts, and
- d. querying a data store by providing the image of the portion of the marker or a compressed or parameterised version of the image and data derived from the pattern.
A method as claimed in any of the preceding claims in which the printing artefacts that are recorded include toner splatter, formation of tails from inkjets, shape, diameter/size and deposition errors resulting from surface texture and composition of the substrate.
A method as claimed in any of the preceding claims where the batch number or unique identifier and the positional data are sent to the data store so as to reduce the query overhead to the data store.
A method as claimed in any one of the preceding claims in which the data from the data store is compared with the image of the portion of the marker and an assessment is made as to the authenticity of the marker.
A method as claimed in any one of the preceding claims in which the security marker is printed onto product packaging.
A method as claimed in any one of the preceding claims in which the security marker is printed in combination with a bar code.
A method of authenticating an item where the item has been printed with a security marker comprising a pattern that encodes positional information so as to identify one sub-portion of the marker from other portions of the marker, and which also encodes an identifier, and wherein the marker is read by a reader which captures an image of the indentified sub-portion of the marker along with artefacts of the printing process associated with that sub-portion of the marker, the data from the reader is processed to extract the identifier, the positional information, and the artefacts, and a data store is interrogated to check the integrity of the marker.
An authentication system comprising a reader and a data store, wherein the reader images a portion of a security marker, the portion of the security marker containing spatially encoded data enabling the portion of the marker to be identified and an identity encoded within the marker to be identified, and wherein data from the image is presented to a data store which compares the data from the reader with data in the data store so as to give an indication about the authenticity of the security marker.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.