Today, the best forgeries of product and security labels are still produced by redrawing the labels, often conducted by hand by skilled artwork specialists. The work is often impossible to authenticate without careful study by experienced personnel and the use of specialized equipment.

However, because TrustMark's watermarks are embedded with covert and encrypted authenticity information, which are not revealed to the naked eye, the technique of redrawing the labels so preferred by forgers will not reproduce the embedded covert information.

Forgeries would then have to be made using scanning where a new photo film or scanning is used to capture the original watermark. However there is always degradation of image quality using this technique. And this adds to another security feature, reproduced Trustcopy watermarks are always different, making them copy evident.

As an added protection, we recommend the use of Ultra-Violet (UV) logos as part of our liquor protection solution. UV logos are often an easy way for quick simple authentication at the retail end, for example, most discotheques and bars employ UV lighting, which will make easy recognition of these UV logos.

Adulteration and tamper evident cap labels

Trustcopy uses destructive vinyl labels for protecting all labels including bottle cap labels and such labels provide effective visual evidence of tampering. Such labels will deter the bottles from being re-used or the contents tampered with. However, normal labels themselves are easily reproduced, but with the incorporation of Trustcopy's watermarks with embedded covert authentication information, reproducing these labels is made difficult and copy evident.

Parallel import and unauthorised diversion of authentic products

With Trustcopy's ability to embed 20 layers of independently encrypted information into a single watermark, covert information can be embedded into the watermark for different parties in the supply chain, and access can be controlled to the information.

For the most common application in the liquor industry, Trustcopy offers two levels of embedded information in its watermarks, one for field authentication by product inspectors containing information such as country code and the other for management containing information such as batch codes and production lot. In this combination, only management has keys to both information.

The solution is further enhanced by a verification process that does not require any special training, any software or hardware, resulting in a more cost-effective solution.