A major legislative achievement of the recently adjourned Congress was the passage of the Anti-Counterfeiting Consumer Protection Act of 1996. Unfortunately, security printing techniques have not been able to keep pace with well financed counterfeiters -- until now.
A unique laser and chemical process developed by privately funded research produces a counterfeit-proof image of iridescent color suitable for any security printing job, from credit cards to mass transit passes. This proprietary technology generates optically variable images which cannot be duplicated by any known photographic technique.
Our process is unique because we can print with it, plus it can be authenticated and recognized by the average person with the naked eye, said Chris Cagle, president of Southland Funding, a firm specializing in business loans and venture capital. Most people dont realize it, but when they buy a music CD, computer software or even auto parts they could be buying counterfeited goods made of substandard quality. American businesses lose as much as $200 billion dollars each year to counterfeiting.
The Oster Process involves the application of laser technology to liquid chemical compounds, initiating a series of chemical reactions that generate unique, unreproducable color arrangements. The process produces a "space lattice," or arrangement of molecules which form images when they interact with light. This arrangement can only be created by complex chemical reactions, as the structural color elements are much too small to be physically manipulated into the same positions by any other presently known technology.
The chemical reactions form ultra-accurate printed images of interference colors that are truly iridescent. The colors have an ON/OFF effect with the unique characteristic of being visible only from certain preferred viewing angles. Printed images can be engineered to produce color that is variable depending on viewing angle. The images can also be designed to selectively polarize incident light.
Neither pigments, dyes, nor macroscopic or microscopic embossing is used. The space lattice is NOT a thin film treatment; it does not rely on ordinary printing inked on top of a liquid crystal layer. Rather, it is a sub-microscopic structure and is much too small to be resolved by even the finest optical microscope. The space lattice is extraordinarily stable; consequently, the vivid colors constituting the lattice are immune to sun or ultraviolet light fading. The result is a counterfeit-proof image appropriate for any security printing requirement.
Because the images are optically variable, they cannot be copied in any form. Reverse engineering is not even possible, Cagle said. The Oster Process is superior to hologram technology and vastly more secure than security printing techniques that use ordinary lithographic ink.
The chemical construction of minute space lattices is accomplished in nature in the DNA controlled dimensions of iridescent Hummingbird and Peacock feathers. Interference colors are the purest and most brilliant colors known. They cannot be matched by even the brightest pigment colors in depth and intensity.
In addition, the glittering play and change of hue that accompanies any change of light angle or observer position lends these colors a magic and beauty unparalleled by any other. It is therefore quite understandable that animals displaying such colors were objects of admiration long before people realized that the infinitesimal structures necessary to create these colors are, in their precision and minuteness, a miracle in themselves.
The Oster Process has been proven in the marketplace, it was being manufactured and sold by Armstrong World Industries, Inc. for 10 years under an exclusive license during the 1980s. The Oster Process has been successfully used by government agencies, transit authorities, the recording industry and other manufacturers. Armstrong no longer owns rights to The Oster Process and, as a result, this secure technology, which has been dramatically improved by recent research, is once again available.