Description:
Counterfeiting is a serious problem impacting customers and producers in the global economy. There are two separate issues - the economic impacts from purchasing a counterfeit consumer retail product, and the health risks associated with a consumer purchasing and consuming a counterfeit pharmaceutical product. This effort focuses on the consumer retail products only, as the detection methods for the two problem spaces are very different.
Product counterfeiting is a form of consumer fraud: a counterfeit product is sold, purporting to be something that it is not. As a result, most product counterfeiting is considered to be criminal in nature under typical trade conventions. The key technical challenge to be considered is how to differentiate a possibly visibly identical counterfeit product from the authentic item. One of the key observables lending itself to automated-machine detection is testing for inferior-grade materials.
