The invention relates to a method for checking the authenticity of the specifications of origin of products and the specifications of time-based guarantees of product properties. The method is used to combat product piracy and to provide the prerequisites for automated identification of products, the shelf-life of which is just before the predefined expiry thereof or the expiry of the time-based functional guarantee thereof. The field of application extends in this case to checking food, pharmaceutical products through to technical products. The problem addressed by the invention is that of providing a method for checking the authenticity of the specifications of origin of products and the shelf-life specifications thereof, which method considerably increases the reliability with which imitations are identified, reduces the amount of effort required for this purpose and makes it possible to identify the shelf-life of products in an automated manner. This problem is solved by virtue of the fact that the indication of origin is applied with a data connection to an individual security code on the product, the optical design features within the design area are recorded in their entirety by means of a computer device during the authenticity check, the computer device decodes the connection data to a database which are contained in the individual security code, which database contains the particular individual security code, the data relating to the indication of origin and a query code assigned thereto, the transmitted data are compared with the data stored in the database after the connection to the database has been established, and a new query code is created for each query and is transmitted to the computer device, and, if it is determined that the values match, the new query code is transmitted to the computer device as a signal for the authenticity and, if the compared values differ, a signal for the presence of an imitation is transmitted to the computer device and the transmitted signals are optically and/or acoustically reproduced by the latter.
展开▼
