Hitachi, Oracle to sell China anti-piracy tags

TOKYO: Japanese electronics conglomerate Hitachi and US software firm Oracle will jointly market wireless tags in China that can be used to identify counterfeit goods, the Nikkei business daily said on Sunday.

Piracy of branded and copyright goods has been a source of trade friction between China and several of its trade partners, and the Chinese government is taking steps to crack down on counterfeiting and protect intellectual property rights.

Hitachi and Oracle expect increasing demand for so-called IC, or integrated circuit, tags for a wide range of products, including cash vouchers, luxury items and home appliances, the Nikkei said, without giving a source for the information. No one at Hitachi or the local unit of Oracle could be reached for comment.

IC tags are tiny chips that can store basic information about a product such as where it was produced and by which company. A reader can be used to retrieve that information and verify the authenticity of the product. The tags will be made by Hitachi and cost about 10 yen ($0.08) each, the Nikkei said.

As an initial step, Hitachi and Oracle will sell the tags for use in tickets for big events such as the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai.

The tags would be embedded in the tickets and be used to prevent the use of fake ones, the paper said. The two companies will promote use of the tags along with the Tokyo-based Ubiquitous ID Center, which issues and manages tags, the newspaper said.