Data carrier card having a security thread

#This is the U.S. national stage claimant the benefit of International Application No. PCT/EP2012/002362, filed on Jun. 04, 2012.

#The present invention relates to a data carrier card comprising a card body and a security thread integrated in the card body, as well as to a method for manufacturing such a data carrier card.

#Data carrier cards, in particular chip or magnetic strip cards, are mostly manufactured from one plastic foil or from several mutually laminated plastic foils, which form the card body of the data carrier card. Their card bodies mostly comprise a card core which contains data memory and/or data processing means, such as microchips or magnetic strips. Protective or cover foils, which are laminated to front and back side of the card core, can be transmissive, that is to say, translucent or transparent, or opaque, depending on the requirements. The card core itself likewise consists of one or several plastic foils which are mutually laminated. In the case of several plastic foils the card body and also the card core of the data carrier card form respectively one laminated foil composite. Where applicable, one can dispense with the provision of protective or cover foils.

#Further embodiments and advantages of the invention will be explained hereinafter by way of example with reference to the accompanying Figures. The embodiments represent preferred embodiments to which the invention shall be in no way restricted. The shown Figures are schematic representations which do not reflect the real proportions but rather serve to improve the clearness of the different embodiments.

#There are shown:

#FIG. 1 a perspective view of a first embodiment of the invention;

#In FIG. 1 there is perspectively represented a first embodiment of a data carrier card 1. The data carrier card 1 comprises a card body 1a having a card core 2 with transparent cover layers 3 being arranged on the front and back side thereof; the card core 2 consists of at least one foil 4. Card core 2 and cover layers 3 together form the card body 1a. On the card core 2 there can be configured printed layers 7, 8, as indicated in FIG. 2. The card core 2 has a typical thickness of between 80 and 840 μm, so that the entire data carrier card 1 possesses a sufficient stability. The data carrier card 1 has an integrated security thread 5.

#In the shown embodiment, the card core 2 comprises exactly one foil 4, which has been manufactured by coextrusion and is configured as a strip foil. The coextruded foil 4, hereinafter referred to as strip foil, has parallel strips 5a, 6, lying side by side in the area dimension of the foil, with different conditions. The strip foil 4 comprises here at least one narrow, in comparison to the width of the foil, strip 5a whose condition differs in at least one property from the condition of the neighboring strip 6; in view of its small width the strip 5a is hereinafter referred to as thread strip.

#The thread strip 5a carries at least one security feature, which is tamper-resistant and prevents an imitation of the thread strip 5a or of a data carrier card 1 equipped therewith; in a variant the thread strip 5a unfolds, as will be described hereinafter, an interaction with at least one other layer of the data carrier card 1, e.g. with a printed layer, and produces a tamper-resistant security feature by this interaction. In the first case, the thread strip 5a directly imitates a security thread in the style of a bank note, in the second case the thread strip 5a acts as a security-thread substrate, which together with another layer of the data carrier card 1 reproduces a bank-note-like security thread. In both cases, the finished data carrier card 1 thus possesses an integrated security thread in the style of a bank note, which is either directly formed by the thread strip 5a or which arises by the cooperation of the thread strip 5a with another layer of the card body 1a.