As counterfeiters come up with new ways to produce, package and market their illegal products, companies that specialize in anti-counterfeiting packaging have been using more holograms, 2D barcodes, forensic methodologies, mass encoding, radio frequency identification (RFID) and other innovations to help identify and intercept the release of those products into the marketplace.
These innovations are helping companies address a counterfeit problem that currently exceeds $600 billion in total world trade (up from $30 billion in the 1980s). That number may soon exceed $1.8 trillion, which is more than the gross domestic product (GDP) of most countries. According to data on counterfeiting and international trade, the total value of counterfeit and pirated goods was about $1 trillion in 2013, and is expected to grow to close to $3 Trillion in 2022.
