Japanese
electronics group Hitachi and U.S. software firm Oracle
Corp. plan to jointly market wireless tags that help to
identify counterfeit goods in China, the Nikkei business
daily said on Sunday.
Hitachi
and Oracle will market the IC, or integrated circuit,
tags for a wide range of products, including cash vouchers,
luxury items and home appliances, the Nikkei said. IC
tags are tiny chips that can store basic information
about a product such as where it was produced and by
which company.
A
reader can be used to retrieve that information and
verify the authenticity of the product.
The
tags will be made by Hitachi and cost about 10 yen ($0.08)
each. Initially Hitachi and Oracle will sell the tags
for use in tickets for the Beijing Olympics in 2008
and the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai.
The
tags would be embedded in the tickets and be used to
prevent the use of fake ones the report in Nikkei said.
Piracy
of branded and copyright goods has been a source of
trade friction between China and several of its trade
partners, and the Chinese government is taking steps
to crack down on counterfeiting and protect intellectual
property rights.
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