Hitachi and Toppan (no idea who Toppan is, either) have developed an RFID tag that has a hologram on it, which is designed to make merchandise theft as hard as possible. The RFID tag’s signals are encrypted, which should eliminate the threat of a miscreant hanging around and capturing and cracking the tag. As for the hologram, it’s supposedly incredibly difficult to reproduce without supervillian-esque manufacturing facilities.

The tag’s overall goal is to ensure that only authentic products make it onto store shelves. Counterfeiting, apparently, costs businesses more than $200 billion per year. Canal Street probably won’t care for this technology too much.

World’s first holographic RFID tag to stop Vuitton knock-offs [Digital World Tokyo]