131669Anti-counterfeiting 3D Printed Products using Quad-Band Covert and Overt 3D Printed Authenticating 'Tags'ClosedFeasibility StudiesInnovate UKTraditional anti-counterfeiting measures usually involve hard to copy labels (hologram or DNA). This is simple when products are made in factories under common control. But, with advances in 3D printing - the future may see IP owners license a large distributed network the ‘right to create’ one, or a number, of a particular product from a media file adapted to control 3D printer. The challenge for IP rights owners is how to integrate tagging to aid anti-counterfeiting and enable supply chain participants to authenticate/ verify provenance of 3D printed products. We investigate feasibility of using advanced materials to 3D print a tri-band tag system which will do exactly that, embedding tags that can be read/written to. Key challenges are, validating materials of tri-band tag options, methods for read/write to 3dprinted materials, and performance of tri-band tags. Demonstrators will be built. Counterfeiting is estimated as a USD$1.7trillion threat by 2015 - amplified by 3D printing.