EP1558448A1

EP1558448A1 - Value document

Info

Publication number: EP1558448A1
Application number: EP03757991A
Authority: EP
Inventors: Michael Bauer; Werner Bochmann
Original assignee: Giesecke and Devrient GmbH
Current assignee: Giesecke and Devrient GmbH
Priority date: 2002-10-18
Filing date: 2003-10-16
Publication date: 2005-08-03
Anticipated expiration: 2023-10-16
Also published as: PL374902A1; US8877328B2; US20060107854A1; CA2502157C; RU2322359C2; PL206953B1; DE50312097D1; CN1703324B; AU2003274017A1; RU2005115119A; DE10248868A1; EP1558448B1; ATE447493T1; WO2004037548A1; CA2502157A1; CN1703324A

Abstract

The invention relates to a data carrying medium comprising at least one printing region which is produced by heliogravure and partially covered with a film, and to a method for producing said carrying medium. The inventive film is provided with a slit (12).

Description

value document

The invention relates to a data carrier with at least one printing area produced by intaglio printing, which is partially covered with a film, and a method for its production.

Data carriers in the sense of the invention are in particular security or value documents, such as banknotes, identity cards, passports, Nisa stickers, check forms, shares, certificates, stamps, air tickets and the like, as well as labels, seals, packaging or other elements for product security. The simplified term "data carrier" and "security or value document" therefore always includes documents of the type mentioned below.

Such papers, whose commercial or utility value far exceeds the material value, must be recognizable as genuine by suitable measures and distinguishable from counterfeiting and counterfeiting. They are therefore provided with special security elements, which ideally cannot be imitated or can only be copied with great effort and cannot be falsified.

In the past, those security elements have proven themselves that can be identified by the viewer without aids and recognized as genuine, but which can only be produced with great effort. This is e.g. motifs produced in intaglio printing technology, which are characterized by their characteristic tactility, which is easily recognizable even to the layperson, and which cannot be imitated by other common printing processes or copiers.

The line or intaglio printing technique, in particular the steel intaglio printing technique, is an important technique for printing on data carriers, in particular on securities, such as banknotes and the like. Intaglio printing is characterized by the fact that indentations are engraved or etched into the printing plates to produce a printed image. The ink-transferring areas of the printing plate are thus present as depressions in the printing plate surface.

Before the actual printing process, ink of pasty consistency is applied to the engraved printing plate and the excess printing ink is removed from the surface of the printing plate by means of a doctor blade or a wiping cylinder, so that the ink only remains in the depressions. Subsequently, a substrate, usually paper, is pressed against the printing plate and also into the depressions of the printing plate filled with ink and removed again, the ink being pulled out of the depressions of the printing plate, adhering to the substrate surface and forming a printed image there , If glazing colors are used, the thickness of the paint application determines the shade. This gives a light color tint when printing on a white data carrier with thin layers of ink, and darker tones when printing with thick layers of ink. The thickness of the ink layer depends on the engraving depth to a certain extent.

Intaglio printing technology allows a relatively thick ink application on a data carrier compared to other common printing techniques, such as offset printing. The comparatively thick ink layer produced in intaglio printing, together with the partial deformation of the paper surface, which is caused by pressing the paper into the engraving of the printing plate, can also be easily felt manually by the layman and thus also easily recognizable as an authenticity feature based on its tactility. The tactility cannot be imitated with a copier, so that the line intaglio printing technology offers high-quality protection against counterfeiting. However, these printed images show signs of wear, particularly in documents such as banknotes and identification documents that are exposed to strong mechanical and chemical loads, and are also open to manipulation.

To increase the security against counterfeiting, especially of identification documents, e.g. Passports, therefore, is usually a side of the passport that bears the personal data to be protected, such as name, birthday, photo, signature etc., with a transparent film structure, partially printed on the inside, so that this data is not directly accessible , The production of such a passport is described for example in EP 0364730 A2.

With these film-coated documents, the data are no longer directly accessible from the outside, but if they are carried out by intaglio printing, they are no longer tactile.

The invention is therefore based on the object of providing a data carrier which offers a high level of protection against counterfeiting and avoids the disadvantages of the prior art.

Another object is to provide a method for producing the data carrier according to the invention.

This task is solved by the independent claims. Further training is the subject of the subclaims. The invention is based on the fact that at least one printing area provided on the data carrier and produced in intaglio printing is partially covered with a film.

Part of the print area is therefore accessible for a tactile test, while the rest of the print area is covered by a film. The film can be applied to the data carrier in such a way that not only part of the printing area, but also sensitive additional data, such as the personal data mentioned above, are covered in identification documents. The data page to be protected is preferably used, in particular in the case of identification documents, such as Passports, with the exception of the partial cover according to the invention provided with a film over the entire surface.

The partial coverage of the printed image by means of a film is preferably achieved in that the film has at least one recess, under which the printing area is arranged according to the invention. The cutout should be selected so that the print area and the film overlap. It is particularly preferred if the cutout and the printing area are arranged as centered as possible with respect to one another and the cutout is smaller than the area of the printed image. The area of the recess should preferably be selected so that an easy check for tactility is possible, but on the other hand the film can still perform the protective function. In particular, the area of the recess is approximately 1 to 4 cm ² .

The print area can display any motif. Motifs that are particularly difficult to print are preferred, in particular finely structured printed images, such as guilloches, alphanumeric characters, etc. No further requests are made for the planar extent of the printing area. The entire surface of the document can be be printed or one or more limited areas. The pressure area is advantageously at least so large that it is easily visible and can be checked tactilely. The minimum area of such an area is therefore preferably about 1 to 4 cm ² .

In a preferred embodiment, the tactility and thus the surface relief is not equally pronounced over the entire printing area. The tactility and thus the surface relief in the area not covered with film is particularly preferably greater at least in regions than in the area covered with film. The increased tactility can be achieved by applying more ink and embossing the printed or embossed substrate. This is usually achieved through deeper engravings in the printing plate used. In the printing area covered with foil, the tactility is preferably weak to hardly pronounced, i.e. here the embossing of the substrate and the color application is low. This has the advantage that the film can be applied to a substrate with less unevenness, which optimizes the cohesion of substrate and film. Splitting of the film-substrate composite is thus reduced while maintaining or even increasing the tactile properties of the uncovered printing area.

Especially with very thin foils with thicknesses of e.g. Under 15 μm, which tend to split off or break open in the composite, a flat intaglio printing in the overlap area of the film with the printing area is recommended.

The different tactility of the printing area can be visualized depending on the type of printing ink used. When using glazing printing inks, the color impression depends on the printed color layer thickness, ie the thicker the color is printed, the darker the printed image appears and vice versa. When using opaque printing inks, the impression of brightness is independent of the ink layer thickness. With a skilful selection of the printing inks and ink layer thicknesses, the appearance of the printing area may or may not make the tactility of the motif recognizable to the naked eye.

Since tactile perception is a subjective sensation, a value from which a relief is perceived tactilely can only be determined within broad limits. The tactile perceptibility of a

In addition to the absolute relief height and individual sensitivity, printed image reliefs also depend on the areal extent of the printed structure and whether the printed structure to be felt is free-standing or integrated into a relief-like environment.

As a rough guideline, however, the following information can be given. A relief printed in intaglio printing can be felt tactile below a relief height of approx. 50 μm. Relief areas between approx. 50 μm and 60 μm can be felt well. With relief amplitudes greater than 60 μm, the intaglio relief can be clearly felt.

It should be noted that a relief on the data carrier surface does not match the engraving depth of the printing plate. The surface relief created by the printing is composed of a compaction of the substrate material and the color layer application. The total height of the relief is based on the normal, ie unprinted and unprinted, data carrier surface. In practice, the relief created on the substrate and the engraving in the printing plate differ very clearly from one another. The reason for the deviations between engraving depth and relief height could be due to the fact that the data carrier is not pressed down to the bottom of the printing plate engraving during the printing process and the color present in the depressions of the printing plate is also not completely transferred to the data carrier. Accordingly, the engraving depth of the printing plate for relief-like structures is in the range from approx. 40 μm to 250 μm, preferably in the range from approx. 55 μm to 150 μm. They produce relief structures in the range from approx. 5 μm to 100 μm, preferably 25 to 80 μm. Whether an engraving depth in the border area on the surface of a data carrier leads to a relief-like or rather flat print depends in individual cases on the steepness of the edge of the engraving, the nature of the substrate to be printed (strength, plastic deformability) and the color properties.

Since, as already mentioned, the relief height achieved in the printing result depends not only on the engraving depth of the printing plate, but also on the properties of the substrate and the printing ink, in extreme cases an engraving depth of 40 μm can already lead to a relief-like print image, while with other material and printing parameters, an engraving depth of 50 μm can still lead to a flat print image. In any specific application, however, the engravings leading to relief-like printed image areas are always deeper than those that produce so-called flat, tactile, imperceptible image areas.

Intaglio printing is preferably carried out with intaglio printing plates, which were produced by engraving with a rapidly rotating, tapering stylus, such as, for example, according to a method described in WO 97/48555. The engraving technique of the so-called “separating edges” according to WO 00/20216 and WO 00/20217 is also preferably used. puts. In principle, the engravings can also be produced by means of laser engraving or etching or any other suitable removal method.

The film is usually cut accordingly, preferably a cutout is punched out. In the case of recesses, the security against forgery can be further increased if complicated punching patterns are used, e.g. wavy or serrated edges, star-shaped recesses etc. In order to enable easy checking of the tactility of the exposed printing area, circular or almost square shapes, elongated, narrow recesses are preferred.

The film usually has a thickness of approximately 6 to 150 μm. It is preferred to use very thin foils that are not readily, i.e. can be removed from the data carrier without being destroyed. In particular, foils with a thickness of less than 15 μm, particularly preferably from about 6 to 8 μm, are used. In embodiments in which thicker foils are desired, foils with a thickness of approximately 100 to 130 μm are preferably used.

The films themselves can be equipped with additional security elements. The film preferably has diffraction structures such as e.g. holographic embossed structures.

The film materials used can be, for example, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) or selected thermoplastics. The foils should be at least translucent, preferably transparent and, if appropriate, can also be colored. The film is applied to the substrate printed using intaglio printing, for example by means of hot lamination or gluing. The positioning of the film, in particular films with recesses, above the substrate is preferably carried out by means of position marks on the film and substrate.

All substrate materials that are suitable for intaglio printing, such as paper, plastic, paper laminated or coated with plastic films, and multilayer composite materials are suitable as substrates or data carrier materials. Paper, in particular based on cotton fibers, is preferably used.

The data carriers printed according to the invention have increased protection against counterfeiting, since they cannot be reproduced with conventional printing methods due to the characteristic intaglio printing image and provide a characteristic printed or embossed image that is also easily recognizable by laypersons. The tactilely perceptible image elements additionally offer effective protection against imitation by color photocopying or scanning the data carrier. In addition, the data on the value document is securely protected against manipulation attempts by the laminated film. The present invention therefore uniquely combines the advantages of tactile intaglio printing elements with foils as a protective cover. The films not only prevent unauthorized access, they also improve the fitness for circulation and dirt resistance of the data medium protected in this way.

If, according to the invention, the film is brought over the printing area, in particular in such a way that the print motif continues essentially seamlessly under the film, the protection against forgery is particularly great, since the areas not covered by the film cannot be easily cut out and be transferred to other documents. "Seamless" does not necessarily mean "without interruption" in the sense of the invention. In addition to solid lines and patterns, print images are naturally also possible that give the viewer the impression of a continuous course, such as dashed lines or dotted areas, the individual elements of which are difficult to visually resolve with the naked eye. The motif transition from areas not covered with foil and areas covered with foil cannot be reproduced, in particular in the case of finely structured patterns, by simply cutting out and pasting, that is to say it is not possible to glue them precisely onto documents to be falsified. Possible attempts at counterfeiting can be easily recognized with the naked eye or with a few tools such as a magnifying glass.

It is also advantageous that the printing process can be carried out with a printing plate, and thus the various tactility requirements can be achieved in one printing process.

The advantages of the invention are explained on the basis of the following examples and additional figures. The individual features described and the exemplary embodiments described below are taken on their own, but are also inventive in combination. The examples represent preferred embodiments, to which, however, the invention is in no way to be restricted. The proportions shown in the figures do not necessarily correspond to the conditions in reality and serve primarily to improve clarity.

Show it:

1 is a perspective view of an opened passport, 2 shows a personalized data page in supervision,

3 shows a cross section through an area according to the invention along A - A in FIG. 2,

4 shows a cross section through an area according to the invention along BB in FIG. 2.

1 shows a passport 1, consisting of a plastic or linen envelope with a front cover sheet 2a and a rear cover sheet 2b, a personalization page 3 according to the invention, a second data sheet 4, a third data sheet 5 and a blank sheet 6. The sheets 4 , 5 and 6 as well as any other blank sheets (not shown) are preferably made of paper or another material with a surface finish that allows later entries (extensions, visas, etc.). Sheet 4, for example, contains information about children of the passport holder. There is a stamped passport number on the lower edge of data sheet 4. The personalization page 3 represents the data sheet according to the invention and consists of two transparent cover foils, between which a paper inlay provided with different elements is enclosed. In the present case, data sheet 3 has a smooth surface area 30, in which machine-readable data lines are arranged. In addition, data sheet 3 bears the name 31, date of birth 32, place of birth 33 and the signature 34 of the holder of this passport 1. The holder-related data and the machine-readable data are written into data sheet 3, which is still not laminated, for example using an inkjet printer , The cover film is then laminated. In addition to all this data, the identification document can of course be provided with further information and security elements depending on the intended use become. For example, the passport can have a photo of the passport holder that is also printed with an inkjet print.

FIG. 2 shows the personalized data page 3 from FIG. 1 in supervision with owner-related data such as name 31, date of birth 32, place of birth 33, signature 34, the photo 35 of the owner and the areas 7 and 8 according to the invention. The finely structured guilloché background pattern 9 in the area 7, 8 and the lettering "PASSPORT" and the letter sequence "DE" eg for the issuing country, intaglio printing is used. The area 8 also has a blind embossed area 10. The data page was laminated with a film that has an oval and a rectangular recess over the areas 7 and 8.

If the area 7 is examined more closely, it can be seen that the finely structured background pattern 9 runs seamlessly from the area not covered with film into the area covered with the film. The "PASSPORT" lettering is easy to grasp by tactile means. When the user sweeps the area from left to right, the test person can initially not find any tactile roughness in the area of the film. Moving the finger to the right can clearly, in spite of the same permanent pattern, a tactile effect can already be perceived, which increases towards the center of the recess in the "PASSPORT" area and then decreases in the opposite direction towards the right.

Fig. 3 7 shows the region depicted in Figure 2 taken along the line A in cross-section -. A. The substrate 17, preferably cotton paper, ^'is coated on the front and back film 11, the film on the front side of an inventive - here oval - has recess 12. Furthermore, the substrate has a tactile depth that can be felt with varying degrees of tactility. printed printed. The guilloche pattern 9 shows weak embossing 13 and little ink 15, while the lettering "PASSPORT" shows strong embossing 14 and thicker ink 16.

FIG. 4 shows the area 8 shown in FIG. 2 in cross section along the line B - B. The substrate 17, preferably made of a cotton / cellulose mixture, is in turn coated on the front and rear with film 11, the film on the front has a recess 12 according to the invention - here rectangular. In addition, the substrate is equipped with intaglio printing, which can be felt with different degrees of tactility, and blind embossing 10. The finely structured guilloche pattern 9 shows weak embossing 13 and little paint application 15, while the lettering "DE" shows strong embossing 14 and thicker application of paint 16. Compared to area 7, area 8 has a blind-embossed area 10. Around this blind-embossed area To produce the area, the engravings of the printing plate are not or at least partially not colored, ie not filled with printing ink, before printing. The non-colored area of the printing plate acts only as an embossing plate, with which the aforementioned blind embossing can be produced on a substrate during intaglio printing. The embossed elements, with the exception of the visual impression produced by the printing ink, have proportions and tactile properties similar to those of the printed areas .. In Fig. 4 there are moderately strong blind embossings which can also be perceived tactilely.

Claims

Patent claims

1. Data carrier with at least one printing area produced by intaglio printing, characterized in that the printing area is partially covered with a film.

2. A data carrier according to claim 1, wherein the printing area additionally comprises a blind embossed area.

3. Data carrier according to claim 1 or 2, wherein at least a portion of the uncovered printing area is tactile perceptible.

4. A data carrier according to at least one of the preceding claims, wherein the film has at least one recess in the area of the printing area.

5. Data carrier according to at least one of the preceding claims, wherein the printing area covered with the film has a weakly pronounced surface relief.

6. Data carrier according to at least one of the preceding claims, wherein the data carrier is an identification document.

7. Data carrier according to at least one of the preceding claims, wherein the film has holographic embossed structures.

8. Data carrier according to at least one of the preceding claims, wherein the film has a thickness of less than 20 microns.

9. Data carrier according to at least one of the preceding claims, wherein the printing area has a finely structured pattern, in particular guilloches.

10. A data carrier according to at least one of the preceding claims, wherein the printing area has a pattern which runs essentially seamlessly between the area covered with film and the area not covered.

11. A method for producing a data carrier with a printing area produced in the intaglio printing process, which is partially covered with a film, comprising the following steps: providing a substrate, at least partially printing the substrate in the intaglio printing process

Applying a film to the substrate so that the area executed in intaglio printing is partially covered.