Anti-Counterfeiting

Anti-counterfeiting encompasses technologies and systems that prevent unauthorized reproduction of products, tickets, and certificates. In Mapping Global Trade in Fakes 2025, the OECD and the EUIPO put the value of counterfeit and pirated goods that crossed borders in 2021 at roughly USD 467 billion, or 2.3% of world imports. That estimate covers goods that moved through trade; fakes made and sold inside a single country fall outside it. QR codes drop into printing steps that already exist and ask nothing of the buyer beyond a phone, which is why they are a common entry point into anti-counterfeiting work.

The basic pattern is verification by lookup: each item carries a unique serial number, and a scan asks the authentication server whether that number exists in the ledger and how it has been used. What gets judged is the number and its history, not the material or the printing of the item in front of you, so the system flags numbers absent from the ledger, or a number that should exist once yet keeps appearing in places far apart. Conversely, a single label copied from a genuine item leaves little history to flag, so lookup alone will miss it. Adding SQRC (Security QR Code), which restricts reading, does not change that. SQRC keeps a private data area that only dedicated readers can decode, and that is a restriction on reading, not on copying: photographing the symbol and reprinting it still reproduces the public part.

A QR code is therefore designed as one layer of defence in depth, not as something that stops counterfeiting by itself. Physical measures such as hologram seals, special inks, and microtext protect the carrier, while the code goes where it cannot be read until the package is opened (inside the packaging, under a seal) so serial numbers cannot be harvested from sealed stock. Shipment destinations and distribution routes belong in the same ledger, so that a scan from a region the goods were never sent to stands out; only alongside that distribution control does the scheme become effective. The answer returned to a shopper is also better framed not as a verdict but as a reason to ask the seller or the brand.