Can a DPP Stop Counterfeiting?

Anti-counterfeiting is frequently offered as a benefit of product passports, and the claim is usually overstated in a way that sets up disappointment.

Being precise about what a passport does and does not achieve here matters, because the gap between the two is where counterfeiters operate.

The limitation to state plainly

A QR code is a printed pattern. Anybody who can photograph one can reproduce it perfectly, and the copy resolves to the same record as the original.

This is not a flaw in any particular implementation. It follows from the identifier being readable, which is the property that makes it useful. Any scheme where a consumer can read a code is a scheme where a counterfeiter can read the same code.

What genuinely changes

The gain is real and it operates at a different level than individual item verification.

• Absence becomes informative — a product with no resolvable record at all is immediately suspect in a way it previously was not.
• Inconsistency becomes visible — a code resolving to a different product, size or market than the item in hand is a detectable mismatch.
• Duplicates become detectable — the same serial scanned in twenty countries in one week is a pattern no counterfeiter can avoid producing.
• Verification is distributed — customs officers, retailers and consumers can all check, rather than only trained experts.

The third point is where most of the value sits. Counterfeiting is a volume business, and volume is exactly what duplicate detection catches. A single copied code is invisible; a code copied ten thousand times generates a scan pattern that is statistically obvious.

Serialisation is what makes detection work

Duplicate detection requires that each item carries a distinct identifier. A code identifying only the product model tells you nothing when the same code legitimately appears on a million items.

The fourth row carries a genuine trade-off that deserves stating. Scan telemetry is what makes duplicate detection powerful, and it means recording where and when products are scanned, which is a data protection question requiring a lawful basis and a retention policy.

Where physical features still matter

The gap a digital record cannot close is the link between the code and the physical object. Closing it requires something that cannot be copied by photographing it.

The third and fourth layers are where the sectors with the most acute counterfeiting problems concentrate their spending, and the passport does not replace them. It makes the first two layers available to everybody, which was previously the expensive part.

What to tell consumers

The messaging question is genuinely difficult, and getting it wrong creates liability as well as false confidence.

Telling consumers that scanning proves authenticity is inaccurate and, under Directive (EU) 2024/825, potentially an unfair commercial practice if the claim materially misleads. Telling them nothing wastes the detection capability entirely.

The defensible position is to describe what the scan actually establishes: that a record exists, that it matches the item in hand, and that anomalies can be reported. Framing it as one check among several is both accurate and more useful than framing it as proof.

Where it helps most

The strongest application is not consumer-facing at all. It is customs, market surveillance and retail intake, where trained parties check at volume and where an inconsistent or duplicated record triggers an inspection that would not otherwise happen.

Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 gives market surveillance authorities the powers to act on that signal, and a resolvable record turns a laborious physical assessment into a query. That is a considerably larger effect on counterfeit volume than any number of individual consumer scans.

Retail intake deserves particular attention because it is the point where counterfeit goods most often enter a legitimate distribution channel. A retailer checking codes at goods-in catches the parallel and counterfeit stock that reaches shelves through grey market suppliers, which no consumer-facing scan can address.

None of this requires the consumer to do anything at all, which is the point worth ending on. The detection value of a passport is realised largely by parties handling volume, and it accrues whether or not a single buyer ever scans the code on their purchase.