Nokia and SAP join forces to fight counterfeiting

Mobile phone manufacturer Nokia and SAP, a specialist in enterprise software, have said they will have set up a joint venture to develop anti-counterfeiting systems for brand owners by the end of the year.

The new company - to be called Original1 - will also tap into expertise from German banknote printing and smartcard specialists Giesecke & Devrient and will offer technologies and services to a broad range of industries, including healthcare.

The sectors that will be initially targeted by Original1 include pharmaceuticals, luxury goods and automotive parts.

The venture will draw on the strengths of each of the partners, with SAP providing the supply chain management information technology (IT) backbone, including its Auto-ID infrastructure for product serialisation, Nokia supplying authentication technology that can be carried via mobile devices, and G&D contributing its portfolio of security solutions, including encryption technology.

The overall intention is to provide a real-time, software-as-a-service (SaaS) system that can be implemented easily by brand owners, with each track-and-trace or authentication step carried out using a Nokia smartphone.

"The solution covers the complete sales and logistic supply chain by protecting products and related product packaging by tagging them with intelligent, tamper-proof serialised product codes," said the companies in a statement. 

The system could make use of 2D or 3D barcodes as well as radiofrequency identification (RFID) tagging.

Nokia first started providing a mobile phone-based authentication technology in 2006 and sees the JV as "a logical step in evolving that business," according to Antti-Jussi Suominen, the company's general manager of corporate development.

Original1 will be headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and headed by Claudia Alsdorf, currently vice president of SAP Research. SAP and Nokia will each own 40 per cent of the company, with G&D holding the remaining 20 per cent.

Alsdorf said SAP Research has already run a couple of pilot projects with clients to test the technology and is now ready to commercialise it.