In order to combat counterfeiting and forgery, the European Union (EU) is working on a project that uses non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and blockchain architecture. The initiative seeks to construct digital twins of items to follow their movement through supply chains and is the result of several discussions and blockchain hackathons held by the European Union Intellectual Property Office.
The European Union has announced that is working on a process that will use blockchain and NFTs as part of its fight against the forge issues of physical goods.
The proposed system was developed by the Intellectual Property Office of the European Union and is the result of over 5 years of work. A document released this month describes the high-level architecture the organizations have chosen for their work and provides an overview of how the system works.
Intellectual property (IP) owners create digital tokens (twin NFTs) to prove the authenticity of a group of manufactured products. Instead, these IP owners must be added as authorized signatories to create these products on the blockchain.
Implementation
The European Union Intellectual Property Office wants to have a functioning system in place by the end of 2023, but in order to do so, it will need to develop a registration system that compiles all of the EU’s merchants, logistics companies, and IP owners. According to the study, the system would attempt to be compatible with current supply chain tracking tools in order to more effectively accomplish its goal.