Patent ID: 8730015

Claim:
A method comprising: creating, at a receiving party, a list of previously read item identifiers, wherein the list of previously read item identifiers includes item identifiers that have been read by a radio frequency identification (RFID) reader at the receiving party; receiving, at the receiving party, an item having an RFID tag associated with the item, the RFID tag comprising data stored on the RFID tag; reading, by the receiving party, the data stored on the RFID tag using the RFID reader at the receiving party; determining if the data on the RFID tag is encoded or plain text; if the data on the RFID tag is plain text, determining the RFID tag is a duplicate RFID tag and the item is counterfeit; if the data on the RFID tag is encoded, decoding the data on the RFID tag using a private key of the receiving party as a decoding parameter; checking for an item identifier and a sender identifier as a part of the encoded data; determining whether the item identifier has previously been read by the RFID reader at the receiving party to determine if the RFID tag was duplicated during transport by comparing the item identifier against the list of previously read item identifiers by the RFID reader at the receiving party; if the item identifier matches a previously read item identifier, determining the RFID tag is a duplicate tag and the item is counterfeit; if the item identifier does not match a previously read item identifier, updating the list of previously read item identifiers by adding the item identifier to the list; comparing the sender identifier with an expected sender identifier to determine if the RFID tag was duplicated during transport; and if the sender identifier does not match the expected sender identifier, determining the RFID tag is a duplicate tag and the item is counterfeit.