Patent ID: 7980467

Claim:
A method for authenticating a pharmaceutical product, the pharmaceutical product being associated with packaging having disposed thereon or therein coded data including a number of coded data portions, each coded data portion being indicative of an identity of the pharmaceutical product and at least part of a signature, the signature being a digital signature of at least part of the identity and being encoded within a plurality of coded data portions, wherein the method includes: in a sensing device: sensing at least one coded data portion; and, generating, using the sensed coded data portion, indicating data indicative of: the identity; and, the at least one signature part; in a processor: determining, from the indicating data: a determined identity; and, at least one determined signature part; authenticating the pharmaceutical product using the determined identity and the at least one determined signature part, wherein the coded data is arranged in accordance with at least one layout having n-fold rotational symmetry, where n is at least two, the layout encoding orientation-indicating data comprising a sequence of an integer multiple m of n symbols, where m is one or more, each encoded symbol being distributed at n locations about a centre of rotational symmetry of the layout such that decoding the symbols at each of the n orientations of the layout produces n representations of the orientation-indicating data, each representation comprising a different cyclic shift of the orientation-indicating data and being indicative of the degree of rotation of the layout.