Patent ID: 8415165

Claim:
A sports garment authentication method comprising: providing the sports garment or a piece of the sports garment, wherein the sports garment or the piece of the sports garment comprises a nucleic acid material having an artificial sequence obtained by digestion and ligation of extracted DNA and having a particular sequence of nucleic acid bases associated with said sports garment, the nucleic acid material being linked by a linking group comprising an alkylene moiety, to an upconverting phosphor particle; obtaining a sample of said particular nucleic acid material; detecting the particular sequence of nucleic acid bases of the nucleic acid material by performing a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) on the nucleic acid material; and verifying said sports garment or piece of said sports garment is genuine by detecting said particular sequence of nucleic acid bases of the nucleic acid material obtained from said sports garment or said piece of sports garment.