PUBLICATION
Decentralizing of Transparency: Using Blockchain to Reduce Counterfeiting
Type
Conference Paper
Year
2019
Authors
Research Area
Intelligent Information Management
Event
17th International Conference e-Society 2019
Published in
Utrecht
ISBN/ISSN
978-989-8533-85-2
Abstract
Whether online or in-store, how can consumer trust and interact with certification marks? The lack of transparency when buying a product with a certificate is one of the shadows when economic coming to growth. According to the report conducted jointly by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) on “Trade in Counterfeit and Pirated Goods: Mapping the Economic Impact”, imports of counterfeit and pirated goods are worth nearly half a trillion dollars a year, or around 2.5% of global imports. In the EU, counterfeit and pirated goods amounted to up to 5 % of imports or as much as EUR 85 billion (USD 116 billion) (OECD/EUIPO, 2016). The Increasing presence of counterfeit and non-compliant (often unsafe) products on the European market need from one side the intervention of Inspection Agencies and from the other side a Decentralizing of Transparency by using Blockchain Technology. So far, approximately 50 alerts published each week on the European Commission’s website and just over 2 000 alerts published per year about counterfeiting (Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers (European Commission), 2018). In this paper, we describe a decentralized product certificate information that ensures consumer inform themselves about product specification especially the validity information of the certificate. We implement a protocol that turns a Blockchain into an automated access-control. Unlike Bitcoin, transactions in our system are not strictly financial – they are used to carry data, such as storing, querying and sharing product certificate data after that we briefly examine and substantiate short why the Industry and society need a new approach to reduce counterfeiting and improve transparency and what is the difference to the conventional way to access with a central database. Finally, we discuss possible future extensions to Blockchains that could harness them into a well-rounded solution for trusted computing problems in society. One of the main Goals of this research is we went to enable consumer to check the validity of certifications, understand their value. This would be the one of the important steps in the direction to reduce counterfeiting. Like all prior disruptive technologies there will be beneficial and detrimental aspects of Blockchain technologies that will need to be carefully considered prior to development and commercialization of the approach presented in this paper.
Reference
Daoud, Eduard: Decentralizing of Transparency: Using Blockchain to Reduce Counterfeiting. Utrecht, pp. 90-97, 2019.
