The "stealth fighter" in the package

Dainippon Printing, Digimarc of the United States, Sato of Japan, and MONIC of Japan will establish a research group to implement Digimarc Barcode, an electronic watermarking technology. At the same time, the four companies will also collaborate with the goal of popularizing the technology in the Japanese market.

Digimarc Barcode is an electronic watermarking technology developed by Digimarc Corporation. This technology can make any information into a GTIN bar code issued by GS1 (an organization popularized by an international standard distribution system) (general name of an international standard product identification code, including a JAN code, etc.) ), Implanted into packaging and labels. By reading the bar code across the entire surface of the package, it can be read in any direction. In addition, this bar code is invisible to the naked eye and therefore does not affect the design of the package. At the same time, improving the reading speed of barcodes will help solve the shortage of cashiers at the retail outlets, the increase in labor costs, and increase customer satisfaction.

In addition, consumers can read the barcode of the implanted package after installing special software on the smartphone. In this way, product packaging can be marked on the packaging of goods that had previously been abandoned due to lack of space, or coupons can be issued. In the future, the four companies will also explore new promotional and interactive promotions between businesses and consumers.

The research will widely call for the participation of retail and retail companies, food commodity manufacturers and POS manufacturers, and will also launch activities for popularizing the Digimarc Barcode. The plan for the future is to implement empirical tests in 2016 and start providing authorization and development kits to retail and consumer goods manufacturers in circulation in 2018. The goal is to achieve 5 billion yen sales in 2020.