At various industry events and meetings, and on diverse platforms, a perennial question surfaces: what is the true market size of anticounterfeiting technologies in the brand protection domain? Despite this editor’s long experience in this sector, the anticounterfeitingw question has consistently presented a significant challenge.

In our January edition of Authentication & Brand News™, we asked: ‘could 2025 be the year for smart and sustainable IoT labels?’ The question was prompted by the unveiling of new smart label solutions from Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) and Linxens. The solutions are emblematic of a larger shift in logistics and authentication: moving from traditional scan-based systems to sensing-based networks.

While pharmaceutical packaging safeguards, such as barcodes, QR codes, and serialization, are now standard requirements under regulations like the EU Falsified Medicines Directive (FMD) and US Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), these measures have proven ineffective in preventing counterfeiting, if used alone.

Anti-Counterfeiting News, Product Protection News, Brand Protection News… these were some of the titles that we dreamed up when we decided to launch Reconnaissance’s second newsletter, as our first, Holography News®, was increasingly reporting the security uses of holograms.

John Anderson, Chairman of the Global Anti-Counterfeiting Group until last year, died in early January after a difficult illness.

As we move into 2025, this overview highlights trends and developments that caught the attention of Authentication & Brand News™ (ABN) in 2024 and that could continue to shape the industry.

T-shirts, stamps and gold – the new world of authentication; stand- out developments in 2022 and beyond; authenticating everything from fuel to banknotes.

Without being able to hold or look at a physical object, or even capture the URL of a webpage, the challenges facing trademark infringement and brand protection are different to authentication in the real world (ITRW).

You may have noticed that, in the last few issues since the launch of the newly-branded Authentication & Brand News™, there has been something of an emphasis on sustainability. For companies in our sector (indeed, companies in any sector), sustainability, particularly in the environmental sense, is no longer a ‘nice to have’ – it’s a ‘must have’.

Last month’s relaunch of Authentication & Brand News™ comes, ‘at a time when it is more important than ever for brand owners to safeguard their intellectual property’. This is undoubtedly true, with the effects of COVID-19 making it easier than ever for counterfeiters and fraudsters to abuse intellectual and other corporate property.