One major area of concern for all areas of commerce is in counterfeiting of products. For many of us on foreign trips to places like China and similar places we delight in the opportunity to haggle for "brand image consumer goods" in the street markets. This is for items we obviously know to be fakes such as Rolex watches and French perfumes, but also for others like designer shirts and shoes that are most likely made in the same Chinese factories using the same materials as the high-priced goods we buy in the shopping malls throughout the world. It may also be for low price copies of real items like software and CDs that are copied from the real products. While this may at the time seem like some harmless fun and a part of our holiday experience, it is a very serious matter that is the tip of the iceberg of a problem that is seriously impacting upon world trade. In fact the OECD estimates that today between 8 – 10% of all world trade is in counterfeited goods and this is at a cost of $200 billion per year of lost business to American businesses according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It is also in far more areas that just the consumer goods outlined above. The World Health Organization estimates that the annual value of counterfeited drug sales is $40 billion; while the FAA estimates that 2% of the 26 million airline parts installed each year are counterfeit. On the basis of that, are we really going to feel that the souvenir counterfeited items we buy in foreign markets, or even on the streets in New York, are worthwhile if we are traveling in a plane with counterfeited parts, or if we fall ill and are given counterfeited drugs? In fact a report in Newsday in June covered counterfeited Colgate toothpaste that contained diethylene glycol, a substance found in antifreeze and solvents. Such news makes one potentially lose faith in the established market brands we buy.

One may well ask what has this got to do with the printing industry. In fact a lot has to do with printing as with today's technologies in digital imaging, editing and printing it is very easy for a counterfeiting organization to have equivalent capabilities to those companies creating the printed work that is used in the legally correct products. It is easy today to create accurate facsimiles of original printed material unless specialized substrates or printing approaches are used. Also the Internet has allowed for the creation of a parallel trade in drugs, cosmetics, documents and consumer and industrial products. One only has to see the amount of spam email we get offering such products on a daily basis to realize the impact of this.

The image shows a slide shown at a recent Kodak presentation that shows ways to make printed items more secure from overt to highly covert technologies. Include Kodak image here.