GENEVA and BASEL, Switzerland, March 31, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --



WISeKey is present with its anti-counterfeiting technology at BaselWorld 2014 to demonstrate to the Luxury Goods Market the latest technology deployed with several leading Swiss watch manufacturers. WISeKey's anti-counterfeiting technologies revolutionized the fine timepiece industry when first launched at BaselWorld in 2009 together with Hublot. Earlier this year Hublot announced at Davos the extension of the cooperation with WISeKey for another 3 years. http://www.hublot.com/en/news/jean-claude-biver-at-the-world-economic-forum-in-davos  

The collaboration launched in 2009 has made Hublot a leader in the field of digital identification and authenticity protection. All Hublot watches are protected by WISeAuthentic®, the authenticity certification system based on WISeKey technology, and the 69 Hublot boutiques and 750 points of sale across the world are equipped with the system for activating and reading this new digital certificate. It also led to the creation of "Hublotista.com", an exclusive club which connects all the Hublot watch owners worldwide.

Counterfeiting is a big problem for the luxury goods industry, and especially for the watch industry.  In 2011, the Swiss watch industry exported watches worth 19.278 billion Swiss francs. More than 50,000 people in Switzerland work in the Swiss watch industry.  It is estimated that 40 million counterfeited watches are offered for sale each year.  This means damage of approximately 800 million Swiss francs per year.  All these figures show that the watch industry is greatly affected by this scourge and thus has a major interest in the fight against counterfeiting at the most important trade show for this sector.

"Sometimes buyers know they're not getting the real deal when they acquired counterfeited watches. But more and more often, buyers pay full market price for a forgery, thinking they're getting the genuine item. The latter instances are what we call true counterfeits, and these represent the gravest threats to legitimate manufacturers and the buying public", said Carlos Moreira, CEO of WISeKey.

WISeKey has continued to enhance the technology to better empower brands, consumers, distributors, governments and vendors to distinguish genuine goods from illegal imitations. Foremost among these developments is the deployment of laser engraving, Nano particles and connected watches via NFC tags and iBeacon, using different form factors other than standard smartcards, which can be embedded into products across markets, from consumer goods to manufacturing. Along with supporting the patented WISeAuthentic encryption technology, these tags allow authentication of genuine products for the life of the item, control of the gray market, easier sales monitoring, and a direct marketing channel between the brand and the consumer. The advancements in this WISeKey technology can apply to product and object segments as diverse as smartphones, cars, alarm systems, semiconductors, industrial sensors and household appliances. In the near future, all of these objects will be fully connected to the Internet, enabling intercommunication and autonomous trusted machine-to-machine (M2M) data transfer.

For more information: http://www.wiseauthentic.com

Watch Video on NFC at BaselWorld

Press contacts: WISeKey, Satu Kulmala, Tel +41-22 594-3005, skulmala@wisekey.com

SOURCE WISeKey