Counterfeit products

[scda]

Hi all,

We are facing counterfeit replica of our electronic products on market. I was asked to investigate how can we protect against this.

I have started to look on internet and to get more insight of the matter but I couldn't find real situation scenarios with solutions. I may need more work to understanding better the situation but I was thinking that there are others that have faced this.
Have you implement any protection techniques with results?

Thanks

 

[IRstuff]

Perhaps you can shed some light on how the products are bought and sold? Under almost all situations, the likelihood of verifying authenticity before purchase is essentially nil. I buy lots of stuff on eBay, and generally, I aim for the lowest price, but in the case of leading edge SD cards, those tend to be counterfeit. And unless I buy in high volume, I wouldn't necessarily get the feedback to not go back to a certain supplier. Or, take the case of Fry's Electronics, which is tolerable reputable. Generally, until I plug the board into my computer, there's very little assurance that it will work in my system. In both cases, the customer can return the product and get a refund; eBay is particularly good at enforcing refunds for bad items.

The only proactive thing that might be possible is to list specific distributors on your website or product literature that can be trusted to carry the real items. Your sales staff should likewise be intimately familiar with which distributors are known to be good. Commensurately, your website can list a "Hall of Shame" listing reports of which distributors or channels are known to be carrying counterfeit product.

btw, if anyone does buy SD cards from eBay, there is a freeware program that will brute-force fill SD cards and verify content.

TTFN
faq731-376

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Of course I can. I can do anything. I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

 

[VEBill]

The drug companies (or somebody) have developed an algorithm to verify that a package of drugs is genuine. It was described on BBC WS about a year or two ago. Application was intended for countries where fake drugs are rampant.

There's a randomized code number inside each package that can be sent in by SMS, or perhaps email, for verification, but only once. If nobody has sent it in before and it's on the list, then it's verified and the list entry is tagged. If it's been verified already, or it's not on the list, then the return message says it cannot be verified.

Anyone trying to make copies doesn't control the list, so they'd have to obtain a brand new unverified number for each copy. Buy one to make one is a bad business model.

Not sure if this method might be patented.

An obvious workaround is that counterfeiters could provide their own parallel "verification" system, with their own contact info printed on the package instead. Unless the buyer takes the trouble to start finding the known correct contact info of the genuine manufacturer, they could be bamboozled. I think that the drug companies wanted an industry wide system with a single, well publicized number.

Their application is life or death, so well worth implementing.

Mentioned for reference.