Anti-counterfeit packaging and security cartons

Microtext is text set small enough that a printing plate holds it and an office scanner does not, printed into the carton artwork rather than added to it. It is usually a batch code or a brand name, and under a loupe it reads as a legible line. On a copy made from a photograph or a flatbed scan of the finished pack it fills in as a smudge. It is prepress and press work on the same pass as the artwork, so it needs no tooling and no second vendor.

A guilloche is the interwoven line work used on banknotes and share certificates, set into a panel on a carton or run as a border. The weave depends on line weights our plates hold and a copier cannot resolve, so what comes off the copier is a smudge where the original holds a pattern. The check needs no equipment: hold the two cartons side by side.

An anti-copy pattern is tuned to collide with the sampling grid of a scanner or a photocopier, so the copy carries visible moire that the printed carton does not. It is the cheapest of these checks to run. It needs no loupe, no lamp and no training: hold the two cartons next to each other and the moire shows on the copy. Like the rest of the four printed features it is prepress and offset work on the same press pass as your artwork.

An overt feature is one anybody can see without a tool and a covert feature is one that needs a tool or a trained eye to find. Eastface prints both. A tamper seal and a foil stamp are overt, and so is an anti-copy pattern once a genuine carton is held beside a copy. Hidden fine-line graphics are covert: invisible at reading distance and unmistakable under magnification, and a counterfeiter working from a photograph of your pack never sees them and so never carries them. UV fluorescent and IR-responsive inks are covert in the same way: invisible on a shelf, and visible under a lamp or to a machine reader.

Four features go on any carton with no tooling and no change to the unit price: microtext, guilloche line work, hidden fine-line graphics and anti-copy line patterns. All four are prepress and offset work on the same press pass as the brand artwork. Beyond them are five security inks on request, each after a press trial on your board, and two structural or finishing routes that change the blank or add a die: a tamper seal as a tear strip, a tuck-and-tab lock or a glued end seal, and hot foil stamped from a die with emboss registered to it.

The four printed features do not. They are prepress and press work on the same pass as your artwork, with no second vendor, no specialty consumable and no change to the unit price of the carton, so they can go on your next bulk run. The five security inks are specialty inks, not the ink already on the press, and each needs qualifying on our press before it goes into production. The ink premium is quoted per job and it does not change the lead time. A tamper seal changes the blank and a foil stamp needs a die, so both are settled before the dieline is drawn.

With a loupe, a lamp or a second pack to hold it next to. Every printed security feature is checked against the carton itself, which works at a customs desk and in a receiving bay and needs somebody who already knows what to look for. An anti-copy pattern needs no equipment at all, because the copy shows moire beside the original. A UV fluorescent ink is the cheapest verification to put in a warehouse: it needs only a UV lamp. A thermochromic ink needs no equipment: the check is a thumb held on the mark for a few seconds.

Security inks are inks that respond to something the eye does not, so the mark gives nothing away until it is triggered. Five are available on request. UV fluorescent shows nothing in daylight and a mark, a code or a whole panel under a UV lamp. IR-responsive reads under infrared, not to the eye, so it is verified by a machine. Thermochromic changes color with heat. Photochromic is colorless indoors and colored in daylight. Coin-rub reactive develops when it is rubbed with the edge of a coin. Each of the five needs its ink qualified on our press before it goes into a production run, because it has to cure under our UV and IR lamps and survive the finishing that runs after it.

Yes, and the four printed features go on the next run with no tooling. They are drawn into the artwork at prepress and printed on the same pass, so an existing carton keeps its structure, its board and its dieline and gains the features on the plates. A security ink is the same answer with a press trial in front of it. The two that are not a next-run change are the tamper seal, which changes the blank, and hot foil, which needs a die cut for it: both are decided before the dieline is drawn.

A T-Code mark goes onto the carton, anyone holding the pack points an ordinary phone at it, and their system reads the mark and answers in about a second. There is no app of ours to install and no account to hold. What the phone reads is a texture rather than a printed pattern, which is where T-Code's claim to being unclonable sits: a photograph of the mark reproduces how it looks and not what the scan reads. T-Code is a separate company, made by EMIET. The carton and the mark are printed and applied here, both operations in our plant, and it adds nothing to the lead time; the scan, the database behind it and the result it returns are theirs, and it is the one check anyone down the chain can run, including the person who bought the product.