Combat Counterfeiting with Digitally Connected Solutions
Protect your brand and your customers from counterfeiting with a suite of digitally connected authentication technologies that deter bad actors, restore consumer trust, and crowd-source new data.
We’re equipping brands and consumers with powerful new data and tools
With AI democratizing and accelerating the creation of highly realistic counterfeits, sub-par and unsafe products are permeating today’s fragmented sales channels. For buyers, it means every purchase—in-store or online—comes with a moment of doubt: Is this product the real thing? Can I trust that it’s safe? How do I know for sure? And for brands, it means looming risks of reputation damage and lost revenue.
Most brand teams are under-equipped to combat today’s AI-powered anti-counterfeiting threats. Digimarc can help. Our suite of digitally connected authentication technologies protect brands and their customers from counterfeiting by:
- Making product packaging harder to replicate.
- Giving consumers and/or field agents a simple, intuitive way to verify the authenticity of product packaging.
- Giving brand teams rich, crowd-sourced data to better understand actual counterfeiting activity.
How our anti-counterfeiting solution works
We work with our customers to understand their goals, risks, threat vectors, and existing layers of protection, then recommend one or more digitally connected authentication technologies that can be seamlessly incorporated into existing packaging and workflows. These technologies can augment existing security for added protection or be deployed on their own.
Using our anti-counterfeiting solutions involves three steps:
1. Add a digital watermark
Low friction
Embed SKU-level watermarks into packaging artwork or DigiGram™ security labels.
Advanced
Embed serialized watermarks into packaging artwork or DigiGram™ security labels.
High security
Layer advanced watermarking-based offerings to augment existing security features.
2. Enable an authentication experience
- Web-based: Ideal for consumer authentication, it’s launched via a QR code or visiting a URL.
- Secure mobile app: Protected by username and password, it’s available for both iOS and Android.
- Customer app: Use our SDK to extend the capabilities of your existing apps.
- Back office: Connect consumers with your inbound contact team using a web-based solution for retrospective authentication using customer photographs.
3. Capture authentication data for deeper counterfeiting insights
This data is securely stored in the Illuminate™ platform where it can be visualized or exported for deeper analysis.
Digimarc can help you:
Get started quickly with our simple-to-implement, affordable authentication options that use apps or a browser and require no special inks or changes to print processes.
Make package replication extremely difficult without impacting branding or packaging aesthetics.
Restore consumer trust by enabling buyers to validate packaging authenticity using their mobile device—no app needed—and get a deterministic yes/no answer.
Gain new, crowd-sourced counterfeiting intelligence with every product scan for unprecedented visibility and smarter decisioning.
Turn “unverified” scans into positive experiences by taking consumers to a branded web page to thank them, share coupons, and more.
As risks and threats evolve, adapt by adding additional Digimarc authentication technologies to make packaging increasingly secure and resilient to counterfeiting.
Explore how Digimarc helps key industries combat counterfeiting
Pharmaceuticals
The pharmaceutical industry faces significant challenges from counterfeiting, diversion, and the tampering or adulteration of authentic products. This undermines patient safety, erodes brand trust, and causes billions in economic losses annually.
Our solutions can be layered on top of existing security features, deployed as stand-alone features embedded into packaging, or added as an advanced security label. They can include everything from serialized or batch-level identifiers (that also fulfill regulatory requirements for traceability) to covert watermarks that render packaging unable to be changed without detection—and transform existing security features into a digitally verifiable security layer. They also support secure field agent authentication and back-office inspection.
Consumer Packaged Goods
Consumer brands, especially those selling through diverse digital channels, have experienced an explosion in fakes, proliferated by AI lowering the replication bar for bad actors. This can have an outsized impact on the reputation and financial performance of growth brands—many of which lack both sufficient security features on product packaging and the resources to identify and investigate counterfeiting at scale. Digimarc helps with solutions ranging from low-friction, embedded watermarking using covert techniques in mass-produced packaging artwork and security labels applied to existing packaging to support for digital consumer authentication via the web—no app download needed.
Tobacco & Nicotine
Counterfeiting of tobacco and nicotine products is a growing, complex global issue that causes irreparable damage to public health, erodes brand reputation, trust, and revenue, and undermines excise tax collection. Bad actors now use advanced technologies like AI to replicate branded packaging, making it difficult to discern what's real and what's fake. Companies have attempted to tackle counterfeiting, but stringent regulatory requirements have created technical challenges.
Digimarc's digitally connected authentication technologies deter illicit actors, restore consumer confidence, protect revenue, and crowdsource real-time data to help brands understand, detect, and mitigate emerging threats. From covert watermarks to simple, two-factor consumer authentication and field agent authentication, we have the expertise and technologies to combat counterfeiting.
Government
Protecting the integrity of everything from currency, identity cards, and official documents to tax stamps is of paramount importance for state actors. Digimarc has decades of experience helping governments combat counterfeiting of assets—for example, in protecting currency for the world’s central banks and providing security solutions for driving licenses, ID cards, birth certificates, and tax stamps. Typically, Digimarc solutions augment existing security features in these assets and can be authenticated using a secure app available only to authorized personnel.
Automotive
Defective, substandard, or incorrect automotive parts can have unthinkable safety implications for end users and the entire automotive value chain. Digimarc provides anti-counterfeiting solutions that enable trusted distributors and supply chain partners to verify the authenticity of OEM parts. Typically, these solutions include covert watermarks embedded in existing labels on parts packaging or a DigiGram™ security label, combined with a secure mobile app for authorized users.
Advanced protection for high-value items
For products requiring the highest level of security, Digimarc collaborates with you to develop cutting-edge, multi-technology driven strategies—leveraging your existing printing and security technologies to enhance copy deterrence.
Explore our other related solutions
Leak Detection
Internal Compliance
Piracy Prevention
Royalty Monitoring
Provenance & Authenticity (C2PA)
Recycling
Explore solution extensions that help you:
Protect large-scale, dynamic loyalty & reward and warranty registration programs.
Provide access to rich and powerful consumer experiences that comply with GS1 Digital Link standards.
Extend deeper into the supply chain with our industrial automation tools.
Resources
Securing the Future: Navigating Package Security & Anti-Counterfeit Technologies
The Art of Anti-Counterfeiting: How Digital Watermarks Improve Nutritional Supplement Package Security
