Taggants: Three-Dimensional Bar Codes

It is estimated that American businesses lose more than $250 billion through counterfeited products. Counterfeiters use readily available printers to duplicate packaging or falsify expiration dates on stolen merchandise.

To combat such craftiness, product manufacturers can turn to taggants, small, distinct particles placed discreetly into a product or its packaging, for identification purposes. Tracking Technologies Inc. (TTI), a company recently enlisted as a strategic partnership by H. B. Fuller as part of its Smart Packaging initiative geared toward the pharmaceutical industry, has created a new approach to the color-code system by using specialized blends of colors to formulate billions of distinct codes. In turn, these codes can be carried in adhesives, coatings, inks, and plastics to be placed on a product—or directly into the products themselves. These hidden or discreet "bar codes" can be used by manufacturers to identify, track, and trace a given product.

With its flexibility in applications, TTI's taggants, sold under the name DataTrax, are with unique, traceable, and secure product identifiers. A special numbering system guarantees unique, unduplicated varieties of codes.

Once a DataTrax code is incorporated into a manufactured good, that code is registered exclusively to the customer and then permanently discontinued from production. In the field, DataTrax codes are quickly and easily read with magnification devices.

The future of DataTrax taggants is very promising. Unlike today's bar codes, DataTrax is not only applied discreetly onto or into products, but it can also be incorporated into diverse manufacturing materials such as chemicals, plywood, textiles, and paper. Taggants' powerful versatility will bring sweeping and long-lasting changes to the bar code industry in just a few years.