This combination of technologies will become available within the next 5 years. It will cost more than embossed holograms, but will produce tags, labels and ID cards that are relatively inexpensive and extremely difficult to counterfeit. And, the copyright owner can change the key for each production run. Modern data communication systems used to verify credit cards by telephone can easily be used to track labels and ensure not only that counterfeits will be detected but also that many types of fraud such as re-used of labels can be detected. Copying is useless.
Electronic communications enable cross checks to track card usage.
Probable will be commercially available in 3 to 4 years. There are several techniques that can be employed to make mechanical or optical copying much more difficult. For example, extremely high frequency holograms can be made which are only embossable on special equipment. Holograms have been useful anti-counterfeit devices since the late 1970's Hologram embossing, developed in 1980, made holograms inexpensive enough that they have now been used on everything from passports to breakfast cereal, and from currency to cosmetics, to deter counterfeiters. The spread of hologram technology will soon reduce the value of ordinary embossed holograms as anti-counterfeit devices.