Documents embossed with optical markings representing genuineness information

• US 4,184,700 A
• Filed: 09/01/1978
• Issued: 01/22/1980
• Est. Priority Date: 11/17/1975
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: LGZ Landis & Gyr Zug AG (Landis+Gyr Group AG)
• Original Assignee: LGZ Landis & Gyr Zug AG (Landis+Gyr Group AG)
• Inventors: Greenaway, David L.
• Primary Examiner(s): McQuade, John
• Application Number:
  US05/938,922
• Time in Patent Office: 508 Days
• Field of Search: 283/6, 283/7, 283/8 R, 283/9 R, 283/11, 283/17, 101/31
• US Class Current: 283/91
• CPC Class Codes: B41M 3/14 Security printing securities B42D25/29
• CPC Class Codes: B41M 7/00 After-treatment of prints, e.g. heating, irradiating, setting of the ink, protection of the printed stock pre-treatment or treatment during printing B41M5/0011; printers for treating or overcoating copy materials before, during or after printing B41J11/0015
• CPC Class Codes: B42D 25/328 Diffraction gratings; Holograms
• CPC Class Codes: G03H 1/0244 Surface relief holograms replicating hologram without interference recording G03H1/0276
• CPC Class Codes: G03H 2250/40 Printed information overlapped with the hologram
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 19/16 the marking being a hologram or diffraction grating
• CPC Class Codes: G09F 3/0294 where the change is not permanent, e.g. labels only readable under a special light, temperature indicating labels and the like
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 283/901 Concealed data
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 283/902 Anti-photocopy

Abstract

There is disclosed a document comprising a flat support member of non-thermoplastic material at least partly coated with a thermoplastic coating, in which coating are embossed optical markings having a light-modifying relief structure, said markings representing information indicating the genuineness or identity of the document. There is also disclosed a process for producing such a document, and an embossing die for use in such a process.

Claims

1. A document comprising a flat support member of paper or cardboard at least partly coated with a thermoplastic coating, in which coating are embossed optical markings having a relief structure with a line spacing in the range of 0.5 to 100 microns, said markings representing information indicating the genuineness of the document, said markings being machinereadable by means of the light diffraction or refraction caused by the relief structure, and further comprising a thin metallic coating covering said optical markings.

2. A document according to claim 1, further comprising a transparent protective coating covering said optical markings.

3. A document comprising a flat support member of paper or cardboard at least partly coated with a thermoplastic coating, in which coating are embossed optical markings having a relief structure with a line spacing in the range of 0.5 to 100 microns, said markings representing information indicating the genuineness of the document, said markings being machinereadable by means of the light diffraction or refraction caused by the relief structure, wherein said thermoplastic coating comprises thermoplastic ink printed on said support member in the form of numerical or alpha-numerical characters, the information represented by each of said characters being additionally represented in coded form by the relief structure of each respective character.

4. A document according to claim 3, further comprising a thin metallic reflection coating covering said optical markings.

5. A document according to claim 4, further comprising a transparent protective coating covering said optical markings.

6. A document comprising a flat support member of paper partly coated with a thermoplastic coating, in which coating are embossed optical markings having a relief structure with a line spacing in the range of 0.5 to 10 microns, said markings representing information indicating the genuineness of the document, said markings being machine-readable by means of the light diffraction caused by the relief structure, and further comprising a thin metallic reflection coating covering said optical markings.

7. A document according to claim 6, further comprising a transparent protective coating covering said optical markings.