Anti-counterfeiting - RFID Technology

Counterfeiting is prevalent in most of the industries like food, electronics, pharma etc. In pharma it is estimated that around 30% of the medicines sold in developing countries could be counterfeit, among which 50% are sold online. Traditionally, anti-counterfeiting techniques were used to authenticate the product. Of late, in addition to authenticating the product, it is also been used to track and trace the product in the supply chain. There are around 200 kinds of anti-counterfeiting techniques, which could be broadly classified into following - Overt Technologies (Visible features) - Covert Technologies (Hidden markers) - Forensic Techniques - Track and Trace Track and Trace - RFID Technology Assigning a unique identity to each unit of the product during its manufacture, which is later verified at each point in the supply chain to the information stored in the database. This technology is still in its nascent stage due to high cost associated with it lack of infrastructure and incentive from regulatory body to implement the technology. This article aims to highlights the use of RFID technologies to counter the counter the counterfeit measure. Author: Sarabjeet Singh Sharad