Controlling the legitimacy and the brand integrity of a product in the supply chain has been a struggle for manufacturers long before the first knock-off Rolex watch. However, a new twist on using radio frequency identification (RFID) may provide an answer. Smart electronic security markers, based on RFID technology, are making an impact with item-level security and laying the ground work for this kind of protection in future applications. RFID tags embedded at the product item-level make it easier to guarantee authenticity and represent an increasingly important value proposition for RFID by protecting product and brand integrity.
This paper will take a look at the size and most common means of counterfeiting today in pharmaceutical and consumer products industry as well as with peripheral or replacement market products. It will then explain how an RFID system works and propose a range of increasingly secure methods of using RFID to prevent some of the different types of counterfeiting.