The problem
Material and immaterial assets counterfeiting is a growing problem. The global volume of counterfeiting affairs adds up to 450 billion dollars (World Trade Organization), and it has increased up to 1600% in the last 10 years. Not only the so-called “luxury assets” are being damaged by counterfeiting, but the whole economy itself.
Italy is involved in the counterfeiting phenomenon primarly in those markets where “made in Italy” is an added value and a guarantee for the product’s quality. In this area the preservation of tipical food farming products, strictly connected to the region and its specific identity, may give benfits to all of the Italian prime-quality productions: the defeat of this phenomenon would guarantee other 130.000 job opportunities (Censis).
The business of international agropiracy against the “made in Italy” food processing is an affair worth 1,6 euro millions a day, a total of 600 euro millions each year; with a great range of counterfeited products like wine, oil, cheese and cold cuts, not only our DOP, IGP and STG are damaged, but also the whole food processing system is.
Solutions
ViDiTrust develops anti-counterfeiting solutions for documents and packages are reliable, efficent and affordable. Solutions are based upon a new technology in the patenting phase. Our company solution is highly flexible and can cover various scenarios like:
label authentication and anti-counterfeiting solutions;
systems for paper documents genuinity validation;
systems for verification and certification of printed products;
embedded solutions providing customers a simple and reliable authentity verification and traceability of purchased products;
Furthermore, ViDiTrust offers consulting on topics like document security and anti-counterfeiting, and is interested in finding industrial partners wanting to use their technologies in OEM modes.
Technology
ViDiTrust solutions are based on passive authentication. ViDiTrust overcomes the problems connected to high costs, lack of security and difficulty in implementation by proposing a reliable technology, witch can be easily integrated in the company processes and competitively priced.
Markets
Private sector: industrial or commercial firms owners and/or authorized brand users, end-users.
Public sector: pulic administration, defense. Technologies of ViDiTrust ara applyable to the following sectors:
Food: certification of origin and authentication of protected farm products;
Fashion: protection of clothings, accessories, footwear, sportswear, cosmetics;
Industry: protection from commercial frauds in manifacturing;
Pharma: security for certificates authenticity, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, etc.;
Document security: protection from counterfeiting and duplication of official documents.
Who we are
ViDiTrust is a spin-off of the University of the studies of Siena.
The know-how of the company comes from Visual Information Processing and Protection group (laboratorio di Telecomunicazioni e Telematica del dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione), conducting
worl-wide relevant researches on the visual information elaboration and protection, focused particurarly towards the techniques of the Information Hiding. The presence of researchers trained at international level guarantees innovative content within the proposed solutions.
Laboratory for Applied Ontology
Applied Ontology is born thanks to the sharing of two apparently different study fields.
on the one hand the philosophy, more particularly to the philosophy of knowledge, on the other the analysis, the design and the implementation of software systems.
Knowledge representation
The subject matter of our work is the representation of knowledge and the development of an ontology. The latter being closely related to the identification of an antecedent and prioritary cognitive framework. In our opinion it makes impractical, as well as long-term unsuccessful, to talk about ontology (eg computers) without taking into account the ground in which, since always, this ancient discipline has rooted and developed. This land is indeed the philosophy.
Ontology
Ontology, as it is known, must also meet the requirements that are emerging in many scientific fields in a compelling way.
Members of the global scientific community will inevitably use different terms and describe the results of their research in different ways, often actually incommensurable. The commitment of the ontological investigation is to organize and systematize these results, following structures based on a limited number of concepts and principles, focusing on clear and shared conceptual frameworks.
The exponential growth of information to be understood and classified requires in fact, and inevitably, transparent criteria that facilitate conceptualization of the definition, classification, and finally, fruition and communication. The ontology is used for these purposes.
Knowledge
Even more of the term “ontology” is the term “knowledge” to be strategic, even vital for the prospecting world.
Preservation and transmission of the acquired knowledge; sharing the knowledge of which each of us becomes the bearer of; comprehension of the cognitive schemas to interpret our mindsets and our ways of communication: everything, in this moment, concurs in a need for unity, integration, communication of which the representation of knowledge and ontology philosophy become the bearers, both in their own area of expertise. That is the general study of the structures and the ways in which we know.
Copyright protection
The protection of copyright, an issue important for the owner of the content, is protected by XLimage® in 3 ways:
- The user of Internet/Intranet/2, 5G/3G never has the whole image but only a portion;
- The portion of the image transmitted on the network can be compressed in JPG format, while the master copies on the server are in an uncompressed format;
- The image may contain a watermark (digital watermarking) to enable tracking of possible abuse pursuable by law.
Digital watermarking
The watermarking algorithm used is patented by the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications of the University of Florence. Extensive documentation on research that supports this technology is available at: lci.det.unifi.it.
The marking can be done offline (readable mark) and / or online (readable or detectable mark). The readable mark is characterized by the use of a password of 10 letters and 8 numbers and a 64-bit mark according to the guidelines of the ISO / JPG, directive No. 10,918 parts 3 and 4.
Centrica also provides consulting services related to IPR issues.
Cloud computing
Cloud computing makes resources available to the user as if they were implemented by “standard “systems (servers or personal devices).
The actual use of resources is not defined in detail, and indeed the idea is just that the implementation is a cloud of heterogeneous and distributed resources whose characteristics are unknown to the user.
Centrica provides support for the implementation of systems based on these technologies, or for hosting services on infinitely scalable platforms.
Digitalizz@zione avanzata mediante Nuove Tecnologie Editoriali (D@NTE)
(Advanced digitaliz@tion through new publishing technologies)
D@NTE is a project of industrial research and experimental development whose purpose is to adequately address the emerging digital market of digital editory, with the introduction of new channels and formats, new ways in dealing with end users and new models of distribution and sales. D@NTE is based on a strategy for coherent and organic change that includes the following fields of activity: testing of new models of allocation and sale of digital content through proper utilization of the new media’s potential and distribution channels such as e-book, new transmission technologies for delivery, next-generation mobile devices such as iPhone, Android smart phones and interactive whiteboards (IWB), design and development of a new system of innovative digital products and services to be delivered on different channels with different formats and on multiple devices (computers, mobile handsets, tablets, e-book readers), prototyping delivery platforms to support new models of delivery and sale of digital content over the Internet and secure networks based on wireless stations and multi-media totems (D@NTE Box), experimental review of production processes in logic of a cross-media production with the aim to enable the production either for current channels and formats and, in perspective, for the new media channels, updating and upgrading of the internal skills to acquire the skills needed to manage a process of cross-media production (formation of digital newsrooms), extension and development of technological infrastructure in the logic of cross-media production with the adoption of common standards and technology advanced coding, production and storage of digital content and products.
D@NTE operates in the following areas:
- educational sector;
- enogastronomical area;
- tourism and cultural heritage and landscape industry;
- youth area.
