Counterfeiting of consumer goods is a rapidly increasing problem, and results in hundreds of billions of dollars in losses annually. Counterfeit products made to low quality standards impact not only revenues but also the good will of a brand, and can endanger the consumers of the product as well.
Counterfeiters have devised numerous tactics to attempt to pass off counterfeit goods as genuine branded products. One such tactic is to provide counterfeit goods with serial numbers that mimic the serial numbers of authentic products. Known serialization schemes typically include at least one sequentially incrementing digit that is located at the same position in the serial number. It is therefore easy for counterfeiters to imitate a range and scheme of serial numbers simply by looking at a small batch of serial numbers, identifying the incrementing digits, and printing labels, according to the scheme, that appear to be authentic.
It is therefore desirable to increase the difficulty of reverse-engineering serial numbers so as to impede counterfeiters from easily determining the serialization scheme of the numbers.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds