EP2035236B1 - Personalization method for the creation of a wavy character pattern, and personalized security document - Google Patents

Abstract

The invention relates to a personalization method for creating at least one wavy character pattern (1 to 9) from characters that are arranged in at least one row on a plastic or paper substrate of a security document, particularly a person's passport. Said method comprises the following steps: - certain person-specific data is selected among an amount of stored person-specific data associated with a specific person; - at least some of the selected person-specific data is assigned to predetermined positions in order to create at least one portion of a wavy virtual character pattern that is arranged in one or several rows and contains at least some character pattern data; - a laser apparatus is programmed with the character pattern data; - the characters that are based on the character pattern data are burned in by means of a laser beam of the laser apparatus which can be moved along a surface of the plastic or paper substrate in order to create a portion of the real wavy character pattern that is arranged in one or several rows.

Description

The invention relates to a personalization method for generating at least one wave-shaped character image from at least one row arranged characters on a plastic or paper substrate of a security document, in particular a passport, and a personalized security document according to the preambles of claims 1 and 12.

In order to make security documents, such as passports, identity cards or ID cards, which have a printed paper page with laminated plastic films, tamper-proof, security features are usually applied to the paper side or the paper substrate and / or onto or into the plastic film or the plastic substrate brought in. There are various types of security features known, such as tilting images, which are arranged within the plastic substrate to give rise to different images at different angles of tilt of the document with respect to the viewing direction. Likewise, there are UV images or so-called micro-lettering.

Such a micro-typeface is characterized in that the text thus written, which as a rule consists of letters and numbers or numbers, can not be read by the naked eye, but rather can only be recognized as a line. In general, such micro-lettering during the printing process when printing a background of the paper side mitaufgebracht by an inkjet printer, wherein the paper side is then welded or laminated in the plastic film. Alternatively, the the paper-covering plastic film mirrored by the inkjet printer are printed with the image to be subsequently applied to the paper page, for example in the form of a lamination.

Such microfonts are designed for fake security reasons not only as straight lines, but also wavy, it should be noted that the naked eye recognizes the micro-lettering only as a line.

If someone tries to fake or copy such a document by a simple copying process, due to the small dimensions of the micro-font would only create a wavy line that can be seen with the aid of magnifying means that the lines no longer contain micro-fonts.

Conventionally, in such conventional printing operations, the characters used as micro-characters are always the same for each security document which passes through a personalization system in addition to a large number of other security documents at high speed.

Accordingly, the present invention has for its object to provide a personalization method for generating at least one wavy character image from at least one row arranged characters on a plastic or paper substrate of a security document, in particular a personal passport, as well as a personalized security document available, the forgery-proof production of Security documents using interchangeable characters.

This object is achieved on the method side by the features of claim 1 and product side by the features of claim 12.

• Auswählen von bestimmten personenspezifischen Daten aus einer einer bestimmten Person zugeordneten Menge an abgespeicherten personenspezifischen Daten,
• Zuordnen zumindest eines Teils der ausgewählten personenspezifischen Daten vorbestimmbaren Positionen zur Erzeugung zumindest eines Teil eines ein- oder mehrreihig und wellenförmig ausgebildeten virtuellen Schriftzeichenbildes mit zumindest einem Teil an Schriftzeichenbilddaten,
• Programmierung einer Lasereinrichtung mit den Schriftzeichenbilddaten, und
• Einbrennen der auf den Schriftzeichenbilddaten basierenden Schriftzeichen mittels eines Laserstrahls der entlang einer Oberfläche des Kunststoff- oder Papiersubstrates verschiebbaren Lasereinrichtung zur Erzeugung eines Teils des realen ein- oder mehrreihigen und wellenförmig ausgebildeten Schriftzeichenbildes, wobei die Schriftzeichen als ohne Zuhilfenahme von Vergrößerungsmitteln nicht lesbarer Mikrotext ausgebildet sind.

An essential point of the invention is that in a personalization method for generating at least one wavy character image from at least one row arranged characters on a plastic or paper substrate of a security document, in particular a passport, the following steps are applied:

• Selecting particular personal data from an amount of stored personal data associated with a particular person,
• Associating at least a portion of the selected person-specific data with predeterminable positions for generating at least a portion of a single-row or multi-row and wavy-formed virtual character image with at least a portion of character image data;
• Programming a laser device with the character image data, and
• Burning the characters based on the character image data by means of a laser beam of the laser device displaceable along a surface of the plastic or paper substrate to produce a part of the real single- or multi-row and wave-shaped character image, wherein the characters are designed as non-readable microtext without the aid of enlarging means.

The personalized security document produced by means of such a method, which has at least one plastic or paper substrate, is characterized in that the plastic or paper substrate contains a wavy and one-row or multi-row character image with person-specific data burnt on its surface by means of the laser device.

By using such a method, it is possible for the first time that person-specific data, such as names, birth data, eye color and the like, to be changed quickly and easily in the transition from the step of personalizing a first security document to the further step of personalizing a further security document the characters, which are predominantly micro-characters, can be included, since such a laser device enables the rapid exchange of data and the rapid programming or branding of new person-specific data. As a result, person-specific data by means of a wavy micro-lettering, which is unreadable to the naked eye, be incorporated into an already aufzutragendes or einzuarbeitendes image, so that in combination with the image increased security against counterfeiting of the document was created.

Preferably, in such a manufacturing method, the steps of assigning at least a portion of the selected person-specific data to predeterminable positions, programming a laser device, and burning the character image data-based characters are repeated until the entire wavy one real character image is burned. It can therefore be calculated separately before burning or applying or engraving the wave-shaped microtext lettering the respective position of each character or any number or part of characters or numbers and then a burn / Apply / Engrave done before the position another number is calculated. For this purpose, the particular person-specific data, which may include at least one character assigned to a particular position and branded, then assign another character of another position and burn this before a third character is calculated in position, etc .. At the end of such a repetitive process flow is a wavy lettering from the micro-typed, which contains individual personal data that may contain additional or anyway from the rest of the security document resulting information about the person.

The characters, which letters, digits and the like characters, as they are known, for example, from the keyboard of a PC, allow the preparation of a tamper-proof personalization document or personalized security document, since on the one hand, a simple copy only creates a copied line and on the other the information contained in the microtext is not readable without the aid of auxiliary means, such as enlargers.

In addition, provided that the wavelike microtext string incorporating the personal data is incorporated in the plastic substrate, there is greater forgery security in that manipulation of the security document requires altering the plastic substrate, which is generally difficult to accomplish.

According to a preferred embodiment, the characters are arranged in text lines arranged one below the other. Alternatively, the characters can be arranged in juxtaposed text columns. This results in a readable text of formulated words, which may include, for example, the name of the person and other personalization data.

The characters can at least partially contain color gradations, so that color contours and color transitions, even when using black and white illustrations, within a character, such as a letter, can run or be arranged.

The font size of the individual characters may be selected depending on the desired persons producing these security documents themselves. Here, the character sizes and possibly also the resolution of each character can be set individually to create, for example, wavy lettering with steadily decreasing letters, so that the individual rows of waves are getting smaller until their complete disappearance. Of course, the size of the characters within a wave series or a Mikrotextschriftzuges as often increase and decrease.

The amplitude and the frequency of the microtext ripple waves can increase and decrease as often as desired within a series of waves and, if appropriate, be of different sizes, even if the individual wave rows are arranged one below the other.

According to a preferred embodiment, an image, such as the image of a person, is additionally baked in the area of the character image, so that the person image is superimposed by the wave-shaped microtext string, which may be four-row, for example.

Preferably, as the laser device, a CO ₂ laser for burning the characters based on the character image data into the plastic substrate is used. Of course, any other laser that is capable of removing parts on the surface of the plastic substrate can alternatively be used. In this context, for example, an excimer laser, which works in the ultraviolet range and can ablate material parts without heating the material by ablation, to mention.

As an alternative to the use of a laser device, a thermal direct printing method or a retransfer printing method can be used both in monochrome monochrome and in full color for transferring the characters or the character image data onto the plastic film substrate.

Such a marking laser can engrave the characters with a font size of 0.4 mm and - if desired - with a font size of 0.2 mm.

The personalized security document according to the invention, such as a passport for a person, thus has the plastic substrate and / or the paper substrate with a character image containing personal data on it, wherein the character image is wave-shaped and is preferably formed in multiple rows by mutually arranged character waves, and the characters are formed as without the aid of magnifying unreadable microtext.

The plastic substrate may be formed both single-layered and double-layered for receiving a paper substrate arranged therebetween. In a two-ply design, the arrangement of the character image on the inside of one of the plastic substrates or both plastic substrates, ie on the side facing the paper substrate, lends itself to reducing the risk of tampering with the character image introduced into the plastic substrate.

The plastic substrate may be colorless, so transparent, or colored with different shades of color or monochrome.

Further advantageous embodiments will become apparent from the dependent claims.

Fig. 1

in einer Darstellung einen Ausschnitt eines erfindungsgemäß hergestellten personalisierten Sicherheitsdokumentes mit Schriftzeichenbildern gemäß einer ersten Ausführungsform der Erfindung;

Fig. 2

in einer Darstellung einen Ausschnitt des erfindungsgemäß hergestellten personalisierten Sicherheitsdokumentes mit einem Schriftzeichenbild ge- mäß einer zweiten Ausführungsform der Erfindung, und

Fig. 3

in einer Darstellung einen Ausschnitt des erfindungsgemäß hergestellten personalisierten Sicherheitsdokumentes mit einem Schriftzeichenbild ge- mäß einer dritten Ausführungsform der Erfindung.

Advantages and expediencies can be found in the following description in conjunction with the drawing. Hereby show:

Fig. 1

in a representation of a section of a personalized security document according to the invention with character images according to a first embodiment of the invention;

Fig. 2

in a representation of a section of the inventively produced personalized security document with a character image according to a second embodiment of the invention, and

Fig. 3

in a representation of a section of the inventively produced personalized security document with a character image according to a third embodiment of the invention.

In the FIGS. 1 . 2 and 3 Wave-shaped character images, which have been produced according to the method according to the invention, are shown in each case. The FIGS. 1 . 2 and 3 differ in that different waveforms for the in this case three-row illustrated character images 1 - 9, which characters, namely in particular letters include.

According to the wavelike three-row character images 1, 2 and 3, microtext characters having waveforms having different amplitudes and frequencies, that is, different wave forms and wavelengths, can be designed.

In Fig. 2 a three-row character image 4 is shown in waveform, in which the font sizes of the characters used therein are steadily reduced with continuous wave until they become invisible or leaked in the background.

In Fig. 3 Again three-row character images 5-9 are shown, which also have different amplitudes and frequencies, such differently equipped character images 5-9 can also be arranged together within a security document to increase the security against counterfeiting.

All disclosed in the application documents features are claimed as essential to the invention, provided they are new individually or in combination over the prior art.

LIST OF REFERENCE NUMBERS

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

wavy character images with different amplitudes and waveforms and character sizes.

Claims (12)

1. A personalisation method for the creation of at least one character pattern (1 to 9) which is wave shaped, consisting of characters which are arranged in at least a single row on a plastic or paper substrate of a security document, in particular, a personal ID card,
   characterised by the following steps:

   - selecting certain person specific data from a set of stored person specific data which is allocated to a certain person,

   - allocating of at least a portion of the selected person specific data to predetermined positions for the creation of at least a portion of a single-row or multi-row and wavy virtual character pattern with at least a portion of character pattern data,

   - programming of a laser device with the character pattern data,

   burning the characters based on the character pattern data by means of a laser beam of the laser device which is movable along a surface of the plastic or paper substrate for the generation of a portion of the real single-row or multi-row and wavy character pattern, with the characters being formed as a micro text which is readable only with the aid of magnifying means.
2. The method according to Claim 1,
   characterised in that
   the steps of allocating at least a portion of the selected person specific data, of programming a laser device and of burning the characters based on the character pattern data are repeated until the entire real wavy character pattern is burnt in.
3. The method according to Claim 2,
   characterised in that
   after creating the entire character pattern, the person specific data is selected from a set of another certain person.
4. The method according to one of the previous claims,
   characterised in that
   the characters are arranged in text lines which are arranged one below the other.
5. The method according to one of Claims 1 to 3,
   characterised in that
   the characters are arranged in text columns which are arranged side by side.
6. The method according to one of the previous claims,
   characterised in that
   the character size of the characters is modified.
7. The method according to Claim 6,
   characterised in that
   the character size of the characters decreases and/or increases within a line of text.
8. The method according to one of the previous claims,
   characterised in that
   at least a portion of the characters includes colour nuances.
9. The method according to one of the previous claims,
   characterised in that
   letters and/or numbers are used as characters.
10. The method according to Claim 9,
    characterised in that
    texts including names, dates of birth, biometric data and similar person specific data are used as the characters.
11. The method according to one of the previous claims,
    characterised in that
    an image such as the image of a person is additionally burnt into the area of the character pattern.
12. A personalised security document, in particular, a personal ID card, comprising at least a plastic or a paper substrate,
    characterised in that
    the plastic or paper substrate comprises a wavy and single-row or multi-row character pattern with person specific data, which is burnt into its surface by means of a laser device, with the characters being formed as a micro text which is readable only with the aid of magnifying means.

Images