Article anti-forgery protection

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11854019-B2
Application number	US-201917259393-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 3, 2019
Priority date	Jul 10, 2018
Publication date	Dec 26, 2023
Grant date	Dec 26, 2023

Abstract

The invention relates to securing of an article against forgery and falsifying of its associated data, and particularly of data relating to its belonging to a specific batch of articles, while allowing offline or online checking of the authenticity of a secured article and conformity of its associated data with respect to that of a genuine article.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A method of securing a given original article belonging to a batch of a plurality of original articles against forgery or tampering, each original article having its own associated article data and corresponding article digital data, comprising the steps of:
for each original article of the batch, calculating by means of a one-way function an associated article digital signature of its corresponding article digital data;
forming a tree based on the plurality of calculated article digital signatures for the original articles of the batch and comprising nodes arranged according to a given nodes ordering in the tree, said tree comprising node levels from leaf nodes, corresponding to the plurality of article digital signatures respectively associated to the plurality of original articles in the batch, to a root node of the tree, every non-leaf node of the tree corresponding to a digital signature by means of the one-way function of a concatenation of the above calculated digital signatures of its child nodes according to a tree concatenation ordering, the root node corresponding to a reference root digital signature, which is a digital signature produced by means of the one-way function of a concatenation of the above calculated digital signatures of the nodes of a penultimate nodes level in the tree according to said tree concatenation ordering;
associating with the given original article a corresponding verification key being a sequence of the respective digital signatures, from the leaf nodes level to the penultimate nodes level, of every other leaf node having the same parent node in the tree that the leaf-node corresponding to the article digital signature of the given original article, and successively at each next level in the tree, of every non-leaf node having the same parent node in the tree that the previous same parent node considered at the preceding level;
making available to a user the reference root digital signature of the tree; and
applying on the given original article a machine readable security marking including a representation of its corresponding article digital data and its corresponding verification key,
thereby obtaining a marked original article of which article data is secured against forgery or tampering.

2. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the reference root digital signature of the root node of the tree is either published in a media accessible to the user, or stored in a searchable root database accessible to the user, or stored in a blockchain, or in a database secured by a blockchain, accessible to the user.

3. The method according to claim 2 , wherein the marked original article further comprises root node access data marked thereto and containing information sufficient to allow the user access to the reference root digital signature of the root node of the tree corresponding to the batch of original articles, said information being a link to an access interface operable to receive from the user a root request containing article digital data, or a digital signature of article digital data, obtained from a security marking of a marked original article, and send back a reference root digital signature of corresponding tree, the access interface allowing access to, respectively, one of the following:
the media wherein the reference root digital signature is published;
the searchable root database wherein the reference root digital signature is stored; and
the blockchain, or respectively the database secured by a blockchain, wherein the time-stamped reference root digital signature is stored.

4. The method according to claim 1 , wherein
a virtual article is counted as belonging to the batch of original articles, said virtual article having associated virtual article data and its corresponding virtual article digital data, and an associated virtual article digital signature obtained by means of the one-way function of the virtual article digital data, said virtual article being not produced but only used for generating the associated virtual article digital signature; and
the reference root digital signature associated with said batch of original articles being calculated from a tree having all the article digital signatures of the original articles of the batch, including the virtual article digital signature, as leaf nodes.

5. The method according to claim 1 , wherein
additional article digital data corresponding to the article digital data associated with the marked original article are stored in a searchable information database accessible to the user via an information database interface operable to receive from the user an information request containing article digital data, or a digital signature of article digital data, obtained from a security marking of a marked original article, and send back corresponding additional article digital data.

6. The method according to claim 5 , wherein the additional article digital data corresponding to the article digital data associated with the marked original article are concatenated with said article digital data.

7. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the article digital data of the marked original article includes corresponding reference characteristic digital data of a unique physical characteristic of the marked original article, or of an associated object or individual.

8. The method according to claim 7 , wherein the unique physical characteristic of the marked original article is that of a material-based security marking applied on the original article, or on the associated object.

9. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the article digital data of the respective original articles of the batch are spread between given fields common to all the articles of the batch, and digital data relating to these fields are not included in the article digital data but clustered in a separate fields data block associated with the batch, and wherein:
i) the article digital signature of an original article is calculated with the one-way function of a concatenation of the corresponding article digital data and the digital data of the fields data block; and
ii) the reference root digital signature is made available to the user together with the associated fields data block.

10. A method of verifying the authenticity of an article, or the conformity of a copy of such article, with respect to a marked original article belonging to a batch of original articles secured according to the method of claim 1 , comprising the steps of, upon viewing a test object being said article or said copy of the article:
acquiring a digital image of a security marking on the test object by means of an imager having an imaging unit, a processing unit with a memory, and an image processing unit;
reading a representation of article digital data and an associated verification key on the acquired digital image of the security marking on the test object, and extracting respectively corresponding test article digital data and test verification key from said read representation;
having stored in the memory a reference root digital signature of a root node of a tree of the batch of original articles, and having programmed in the processing unit the one-way function to calculate a digital signature of digital data and of a concatenation of digital signatures according to the nodes ordering in the tree and the tree concatenation ordering;
verifying whether the extracted test article digital data and associated test verification key indeed correspond to the stored reference root digital signature by performing the steps of:
calculating with the one-way function a test digital signature of the extracted test article digital data, sai

Assignees

• Sicpa Holding Sa

Inventors

• Decoux Eric
• Gillet Philippe
• Thevoz Philippe
• Wallace Elisabeth

Classifications

• G06Q30/0185 Primary

  Product, service or business identity fraud · CPC title

• B42D25/21 Primary

  for multiple purposes · CPC title

• B42D25/405

  Marking · CPC title

• B42D25/48

  Controlling the manufacturing process · CPC title

• G06K19/06037

  multi-dimensional coding · CPC title