Established machine and plant manufacturers are increasingly facing product piracy in international competition. Illegal copying of machine parts and even entire plants causes significant economic damage.

ProAuthent – In this project partners from industry and members of scientific institutes are working to find ways to limit product piracy, developing and bringing to market-readiness innovative methods that already detect original parts during manufacturing and later in service processes and enforce their installation. The use of state-of-the-art IT technologies is of decisive importance here. The development of innovative services offering additional benefits is intended to convince machine operators to use original parts at all times. The aim is to deliver integrated product piracy protection by identifying and authenticating critical components in machine and plant manufacturing.

The project is scheduled to run from 1st January 2008 until 31st January 2011. ProAuthent is supported with funds from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF) as part of the framework concept “Research for Tomorrow’s Production” and managed by the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (PTKA).