AUTHENTICATION METHOD FOR PHARMACEUTICAL PRODUCTS HAVING SYMMETRICALLY CODED PACKAGING

摘要

A method for authenticating a pharmaceutical product, the pharmaceutical product being associated with packaging having disposed thereon or therein coded data including a number of coded data portions, each coded data portion being indicative of an identity of the pharmaceutical product and at least part of a digital signature of at least part of the identity. The method includes, using a sensing device to sense at least one coded data portion. A processor then determines the identity at least one determined signature part, and uses these to authenticate the pharmaceutical product. The coded data is arranged in accordance with a n-fold rotationally symmetric layout. The layout encodes data comprising a sequence of an integer multiple m of n-symbols. Each encoded symbol is distributed at n-locations about a centre of rotational symmetry such that decoding the symbols produces n-representations of the data each comprising a different cyclic shift of the data.