The age-old problem of fraud caused by the sale of counterfeit goods to the detriment of civil society and the consequent adoption of precautionary measures have been the focus of pages and pages of past issues of our magazine.
Several watch manufacturers have come to the rescue with the increasing use of effective anti-forgery systems. One of these is the Rolex which now employs elements that are difficult to reproduce on some of its new models, such as the Dates, such as the engraving of the serial number and the company mark, repeated without interruption, on the flange around the dial and the engraving of the company's iconic crown inside the sapphire protective glass (almost invisible to the naked eye). In addition, instead of the traditional hologram on the caseback, we now find a small, easy-to-remove adhesive film on the Date side at nine o'clock depicting a sort of bar code, called a date-matrix. This symbol is actually an optically readable matrix, containing coded information on the model and manufacturer, which allows the product to be traced. The data-matrix is useful both in quality control and to protect the originality of the watch as it leaves the factory. In practice, the symbol is detected by an optical reader, which decrypts the data it contains (up to 50 alphanumeric characters in just 2 or 3 square millimetres), identifying the individual watch.
We now report a short excerpt from the interview with Antonello Colosimo, Deputy High Commissioner for Anti-Counterfeiting, published on page 56 of L'OROLOGIO No. 162:
D. Professor Colosimo, how much does counterfeiting weigh on the economic system today?
R. I would like to say that no one is able to give scientifically valid numbers, because we cannot have knowledge of the 'production' of counterfeiting, but we can only have knowledge from the 'repression'. So all we know for sure is obviously related to what is seized. But to give you some up-to-date figures, before the new OECD report due at the end of 2007 arrives, we can safely say that in terms of volume, counterfeiting fluctuates between 5-7% of world GDP: a very high figure.
D. The purchaser is probably not blameless.
R. Indeed, today the buyer is increasingly 'seduced' by the quality of the counterfeit products that are placed on the market. He, however, bears his share of responsibility because there is no such thing as the unwitting buyer. One of the ways to dissuade him is precisely that of the administrative sanction that obliges him to pay a fine.
D. How can this be avoided?
R. There is no single answer. Certainly interesting is the example of Florence, where it was decided to run an awareness campaign for buyers, which started in September, illustrating to visitors to this extraordinary city, whether Italian or foreign, the risks, offences, responsibilities and dangers involved in buying counterfeit material. This is an important idea that will certainly be 'exported' to other Italian cities.
Pictured is the date-matrix on the case middle of the Rolex Oyster Date.