Eonpass in partnership with EY Advisory and JAS Jet Air Service won the tender for desining the anti-counterfeiting European architecture. EUIPO (EU Intellectual Property Office) plans also to sponsor a practical pilot project to further demonstrate how Brands can take advantage of the new technology.
The Winning Proposal
The solution has four components: i) a peer to peer layer for logistics data, ii) specifics for NFT metadata, iii) specifics for events coming from track and trace devices and iv) a registry of Business Entities which connects Brands to signed data packages.
The peer to peer layer is the biggest open source contribution as it's an API server that anyone can install to take part in Brand-approved supply chains. Inside this network in fact it's possible to connect a shipment to a requesting Brand Owner, greatly speeding up compliance and offering higher quality services for brands. Logistics Operators will be able to ensure they are handling only authentic products for their intended destinations.
NFT are widely adopted as marketing tools, at the same time counterfeiters have been very quick in picking up this new business line and it's today difficult for consumers (and anybody else) to understand if an NFT was actually created by an authentic brand owner. Our solution proposes that within the metadata package there must be specific fields where the Brand Owner will sign the serial number, the webpage representing the product and the NFT identifier, so that counterfeiters cannot bind fake products to real tokens, fake tokens to real products and so on.
Track and Trace systems already exists and provide physical identifers to mark products and their packaging. When one of the identifiers is scanned the data of this event will be uploaded to the logistics layer which provides an interface to make sure the scan events have all the detail to produce meaningful statistical analysis.
Finally, every exchanged information is digitally signed and therefore it's important to have a registry knowing which public key belongs to whom. The system could work in a complete peer to peer fashion but then impersonification would be rampant, moreover EUIPO already has a curated list of Brands and their respective Owners and it's in prime position to host this Identity Registrar.
Read the EU official press release
What does this mean for Europe
In Europe 45% of GDP comes from companies with high Intellectual Property value which employ 29% of the population. In Italy those numbers are even higher since many products are based on renowed brands and patents protect the large manufactoring sector.
Fake products are a challenge both for exports and imports. Export-wise they generate additional competition and dilute brand equity. On the import side, fake products account for up to 6% of all EU imports. Fake products are not only an economical damage for the right owners but also present public health risk in case of fake pharma products.
The future of Eonpass
Eonpass wants to be the largest and most efficient peer to peer network to exchange logistics data to help Brand Owners and Logistics company protecting the products and reduce manual operations. When the network will be big enough, statistical analysis can spot similar but unauthorised shipments or banks offering trade finance can use it as data source to know the current state of shipments. Finally we are also developing trade finance capabilities for Bitcoin, it will be possible to unlock payments when shipments reach specific states.