Nike’s Patent related to “Cryptographically Secured Digital Assets”: Approach to overcome Counterfeiting

Now-a-days counterfeiting of physical good are very common across the all continents and all type of physical good of all industries. Counterfeiting of physical good are increasing day by day. According to article published on website of NC State University on Sep 29, 2021, “Counterfeiting is on the rise, and projected to exceed $3 trillion in 2022”!!!!!!

Footwear industry predominated by counterfeit products. Nike is not left over to faces millions of losses every year because placement of counterfeiting products in the market. According to Soapboxie, Nike happens to be one of the most counterfeited brands in the world.

Nike is company which is working with Kizen approach so how it remains left for Nike to do not use Block Chain Technology in the era of block chain technology (aka BlockEra)! From Nike’s issued patent number: US10505726B1, it seems Nike’s approach to overcome issues related to counterfeiting of theirs physical good (pair of shoes) by validating originality of physical good (pair of shoes) with liked NFT. Here are details about Nike Nike’s issued patent number: US10505726B1 as below:

Title: System and method for providing cryptographically secured digital assets

Patent Number: US10505726B1

Application Number: 16 / 423,671

Filing Date: May 28, 2039

Issue Date: Dec 10, 2019

Expiry Date: May 28, 2039

Abstract:

Presented are cryptographic digital assets for articles of footwear, methods for making/using such cryptographic digital assets, and decentralized computing systems with blockchain control logic for mining, intermingling, and exchanging blockchain-enabled digital shoes. A method of generating cryptographic digital assets for footwear includes a middleware server computer receiving, over a distributed computing network from a remote computing node, confirmation of a validated transfer of footwear from one party to another. The middleware server computer determines, from an encrypted relational database, a unique owner ID code of the transferee party, and generates a cryptographic digital asset for the footwear. This cryptographic digital asset includes a digital shoe and a unique digital shoe ID code. The middleware server computer links the cryptographic digital asset with the unique owner ID code, and records the unique digital shoe ID code and the unique owner ID code on a transaction block with a distributed blockchain ledger.

How this invention works: When a customer buys a physical pair of shoes, that he/she also receive an NFT of their CryptoKicks linked to the physical pair of shoes. Nike and buyers can then use the NFT to confirm authenticity of the physical shoes and that they passed through a valid chain of title that began with Nike. In this way Nike can avoid counterfeiting of their physical good (pair of shoes).

Use of NFTs to overcome issues of counterfeiting: Companies are starting to employ NFTs to combat counterfeiting by tokenizing their actual products with an official NFT minted for each one. A buyer simply checks the blockchain to establish authenticity. As everyone is aware that NFTs cannot be copied. NFTs' capacity to discern between first- and second-generation digital copies allows them to contribute to the fight against counterfeiting, albeit the realities can be complicated. As a result, businesses and customers can use the blockchain to validate natively digital and tokenized physical assets.