THE PROJECT

The development of the Color Data Matrix code has been carried out by Sinerlab Srl jointly with Top Finish 2002 S.r.l. as part of a project funded by Regione Toscana through the Bando Unico R & D 2008 - DR n. 6744 of December 31, 2008 and subsequent amendments.

The aim of the project was to develop a method for product traceability and anti-forgery, that could be used in the fashion industry, with particular reference to leather goods, clothing and accessories.
The idea behind the project was to create a code that could be used as a real "portable database" to attach to each item in order to guarantee its traceability and raising at the same time a technological barrier against forgery. The proposed innovation is related to the use of a matrix of points, similar to the Data Matrix, but realized with a larger number of colors. For a given specific surface, the usage of four or five colors, as allowed by the Data Matrix Code, makes it possible to increase the number of color combinations, and doing so, to convey a greater amount of information than through the bi-color QR code.

For the development of the code, three are the issues to be addressed:

• Information coding: in order to be able to effectively use the Color Data Matrix it is necessary to establish some flexible rules of coding, that take into account the number of colors that can be employed, depending on the properties of the physical support, on the writing technique, and on the methods adopted for the correction of errors. The latter have to ensure that the possible loss of some points does not translate into a loss of information.


• Writing the code on different kinds of media: he code can be written with very different techniques, depending on the physical support on which the Color Data Matrix must be imprinted and on the maximum area to be occupied by the code.


• Reading and decoding: the reading and decoding of the code is the basis for defining the potential and technological limitations of the innovation proposed by the Color Data Matrix. For a Data Matrix code of a given size, which employs a given number of colors, being able to easily read the code becomes fundamental to obtain applications of practical interest. It is also evident that the ease of reading depends on the value of the application itself.