Pharmaceutical illustration - How it all works? 

Anti-counterfeit and anti-forgery

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

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

This forces forgeries 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.

Trustcopy can incorporate encrypted covert dynamic watermarks that are digitally printed with expiry dates into each individual packaging. As the perpetrators can only alter the visible expiry dates, it is easy for inspections to be conducted on the packaging by comparing the visible expiry dates and the expiry dates in the encrypted covert watermarks.

Unauthorised source

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 distribution network, and access can be controlled to the information.

For the most common application in the pharmaceutical industry, Trustcopy offers two levels of embedded information in its watermarks, one for field authentication by product inspectors or retailers 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.

Pharmaceutical packaging design

Current pharmaceutical packagings are distinctively white in design with limited areas for incorporating new security print artwork and changing the design is often not possible. With most optical watermarks, this poses a great and often impossible challenge.

Trustcopy's optical watermarks are invisible and can be incorporated into any existing graphic area such as most non-solid backgrounds (15%-90% colour density), brand logos, product barcodes and many symbols commonly found on products such recycle, standards and certification symbols.