A certificate of authenticity (COA) is a label, marking or a digitally signed physical object that gives the consumer assurance that a product is genuine, and is not a pirated copy or shoddily made fake. Preferably, a COA has a random unique structure that satisfies three requirements. First, the cost of creating and signing an original COA should be small, relative to a desired level of security. That is, the cost to the genuine manufacturer of the product should be small compared to the cost or retail price of the product. Secondly, the cost of manufacturing a COA instance should be several orders of magnitude lower than the cost of exact or near-exact replication of the unique and random physical structure of this instance. That is, while the COA is inexpensive for the legitimate manufacturer to create, it is expensive for the pirate manufacturer to replicate. And thirdly, the cost of verifying the authenticity of a signed COA is small, again relative to a desired level of security. The desired level of security should be typically closely tied to the cost of the product to which the COA is attached.
The uniqueness of each COA instance is a crucial element in fighting counterfeiting. Any single, unvarying feature can easily be mass-produced by a specialized machine whose construction cost is amortized over millions of counterfeit copies it produces. As an example, counterfeiters have been economically successful in forging en masse anti-counterfeiting holographic features, regardless of their sophistication.
Accordingly, a need exists for a new and improved certificate of authenticity.