What should have been a triumphant finale to the European football season descended into chaos as police fired tear gas and pepper spray at supporters in advance of the Champions League Final in Paris. What role did ticket fraud play in creating the chaotic scenes that were televised around the world as the kick off was delayed by more than half an hour?

The importance of technology in protecting products, people and services against malicious attack has never been greater, as this cross-section of innovations shows.

MagVision, the magnetic innovation start-up, has announced a merger with Macon Management and Design (MMD), a UK-based engineering design company.

In June, Amazon released its second Brand Protection Report, describing the results of its activities to ensure authenticity of goods sold in its store, and to fight bad actors.

At the recent Tax Stamp & Traceability Forum™ in Malta, Dr Marietta Ulrich-Horn, CEO of Securikett, presented a solution for linking the company’s CODIKETT® unique identifying code on a tax stamp with a 2D barcode that had been laser-etched into a glass bottle.

Toppan has launched Illumigram™, a new security hologram in which three-dimensional images appear in response to strong light, such as a smartphone’s flashlight.

Those of us who still believe overt security features validated with the naked eye should be the first ‘port of call’ for checking the authenticity of something, will be heartened by the HP Anti-Counterfeiting and Fraud programme.

The return of in-person conferences this year, after a hiatus of two or more years, has seen a slew of new features launched for banknote authentication.

Dubbed the ‘Sneaker Wars’, Nike’s ongoing lawsuit against online shoe reseller StockX will likely end up dictating how intellectual property law is applied to non-fungible tokens (NFTs), declared attorney and journalist Andrew Rossow, writing for nftnow.com.

The OECD has published a series of reports into illicit trade, the most recent of which is ‘eCommerce Challenges in Illicit Trade in Fakes’. The report is the first outcome of a special project on illicit trade between the Anti-Illicit Trade Expert Group (AITEG) and the public-private partnership (PPP), established under the OECD Task Force on Countering Illicit Trade (TF-CIT).

Chiplytics, a hardware security company building inspection technology that provides insights into the microelectronics supply chain, has announced its official launch from Scout Ventures.

Anti-fraud product provider Outseer has released its latest findings on brand abuse, and it doesn’t make pleasant reading for online banking and eCommerce. According to the latest quarterly analysis from Outseer’s FraudAction team, brand impersonation scams continue to exploit the sharp rise in digital banking and eCommerce during the pandemic.

Pharmaceuticals are among the most heavily counterfeited goods on the planet and, according to the OECD and the EUIPO, are ‘attractive for counterfeiters given the high profit margins, low risks of detection and prosecution, weak penalties, and the ease with which consumers can be deceived into believing that the counterfeit products are genuine.’

The worldwide rising cost of food, due in equal measures to the war in the Ukraine, rising shipping costs and the increase in energy bills, is in danger of creating fertile ground for an increase in food fraud.

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).

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an acceleration of what was already on the cards as far as brand owners are concerned: the need to change the way in which physical brand intelligence- gathering at point of sale is carried out.

Origyn, the Swiss foundation dedicated to identifying, authenticating and protecting the ownership of objects of value, has announced a partnership with WatchBox, a global leader in collectible luxury timepieces.

Holography has helped to bring smartphone digital interaction in the brand protection and authentication space closer as the security technology discovers new outlets and innovative applications.

Conferences are back! And this includes the Tax Stamp & Traceability Forum™, taking place from 16-18 May 2022 in Malta. The Forum opens with a workshop on the pros and cons of using sophisticated digital printers for secure documents, including a review of digital security inks, feature design software, printing hardware and real-life applications.

The circular economy presents a $4.5 trillion business opportunity for companies that concentrate on rethinking products and services using principles based on durability, renewability, reuse, repair, replacement, upgrades, refurbishment, and reduced material use.