The US based "Document Security Systems Inc. " (DSSI) claims that some of the security features used for the euro notes infringe one of the company's anti-counterfeiting patent.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=100...id=a5cAfGCtcxMo

Seems that DSSI is willing to come to an agreement with the ECB provided that the central bank pays for using that allegedly patented technology. The company's press release in German (or whatever some automatic translation tool considers to be doytch ) is here:
http://www.ots.at/presseaussendung.php?sch...0050801_OTS0173

Christian

Absolutely ridicious. Fact: US notes are the world's most counterfeit note. Why? Because the counterfeiting cost against the real value of USD is almost nothing!

Whereas counterfeiting a Euro will prove to be alot more difficult than expected due to the hologram strip and the UV protection ray, etc, proving to be a lot more difficult.

The Greenback stills need to do something major with their bills!

umm, what's this got to do with anything? it's not the bureau of engraving and printing (or, indeed, any part of the us government) that has put this suit forward.

Like henare said, US notes are printed by the BEP, a government agency. This suit was brought by a private company holding patents that they are claiming have been infringed by the printers of the Euro notes. Why not let a court decide who is right?

As for the US dollar being the most countertfeited, could that possibly be because it is the defacto currency of the world and is accepted pretty much anywhere? Watch how the Euro gets counterfeited more and more as time goes on. Guaranteed.

Pardon me, I was not wide awake.

My simple point would be this, you get a private US company suing ECB - I just cannot understand why the US engraving and printing bureau haven't took a serious look at such technology.

Honestly, you know it wouldn't funny if you had a counterfeit 100US bill in your hands, and there were times where I nearly got one. Thank god I knew most of the securties quite well or I would have been duped. There were too many times when I wished I carried Euros because of the levels of counterfeitings in the countries that I went.

You might argue that the reason for the major counterfeiting is because US dollar is the defacto currency of the world, but in reality, the security of the US dollar bill is VERY low, I emphasis this again, *VERY LOW* compared to other major curriencies. Seriously, if I was to money launder, I could do this easily with other currencies, like the Swiss 1000 franc and 500 Euros or Singapore 10,000 dollars and you have a lot less to carry around. Yet you find a lot counterfeit notes of such, just because it's almost impossible to counterfeit them. If you noticed, all of them have pretty high standards of anti-counterfeiting technology in them, one of which is the hologram foil and also *COLOR*, not just some *monotonic* green color. How difficult is it to counterfeit a US 100 bill? You can even find it on the internet if you like - not that I would seriously counterfeit one, but there are pages on it.

It just irriates me of how "irresponsible" a global currency be. It may be the reason that the scale of the amount of US dollars floating globally be tremdenous and the cost of replacing ATMs worldwide, but how much plan was put into to deter counterfeiters? My best guess is that there is almost nil as the basis of the notes have to be similar to the previous design with ultra macro added designs. The best counterfeit design that was out recently was the hologram 20 dollar bill but suprisingly it was rejected by the public due to its horrible design and difficulty with ATMs.

All I am saying is that, this is completely ridicious - didn't the US engraving and printing bureau took a look at such technology where they could possible improve their anti-counterfeiting technology?

A significant amount of USA $ circulate outside of the USA. I can tell you that it is the preferred money of choice in Ukraine and Russia. Counterfeiting is so prevalent now that most people there will not even accept the old small head bills anymore.

Ukrainian paper money has much better protection against forgery than it did in the early 1990's, and far better than USA paper money.

Russia has good protection on the higher notes, but not the lower denomination notes.

two reasons (not very good, imho, but reasons nevertheless): they get their direction from the federal reserve, and they're terrified of change (in no small part because it's fiat money and because it's so widely used).



not at all. it's not very likely, though--$100 FRNs don't circulate widely in the US. many businesses don't accept them. many businesses, indeed, whine when you make a $1 purchase with a $20 note.



umm, there was no $20 FRN with a hologram. the latest $20 FRN has some color (that is, color that isn't green and grey), but no hologram. the $50 FRN (which was the first to feature a more colorful design) shows a lot of red white and blue.

See, that is the real problem. Are you trying to relate that because US 100 dollar bills are not so widely circulated in US itself that the US does not need to worry how bad the levels of counterfeit system are worldwide? I call that ridiciously irresponsible. Yes, you can always say that you have credit cards for bigger purchases but you still have lame fraud, which is much worse than having counterfeit money, as you can go into insane debts if you happened to be an unlucky victim.

And look, I am looking from the perspective from the other world. If you have people complaing how serious it is, you can't just *NOT* listen and ignore the whole story.

I was in Russia before and that was even before the Euro was implanted, so it has been quite some time ago. The only foreign currency that you could bring there is either USD or German Marks. I could have brought German Marks but if I included the lame commission and transmission fees, I would expect at least some 10-15+% loss easily compared to around 5% against the Greenback. Sure I had no problems bringing genuine US dollars into Russia but, I had seen horror cases where students had counterfeited US dollars in their hands because of their unawareness and you talking in terms of at least one grand. That is indeed very nasty, and who knows what happened to them... Russia isn't the only country that you have to bring cash around, or more like, credit card frauds are too common. The world isn't just US alone.

Honestly, for god's sake, a new security design of the greenback is way overdue. Even Russian rubles, like what Ukrainia Ubi said (you may think those bills are awfully lame) do a lot better job than most higher valued US paper bills.

Here is a 1000 ruble (approximately 35USD) note with all the security features detailed:

http://www.cbr.ru/eng/bank-notes_coins/ban...n_1000R_eng.htm

And 500 rubles [approximately 18USD]: http://www.cbr.ru/eng/bank-notes_coins/ban...an_500R_eng.htm

you really need to read for content here--you're reading a lot into what i've written that just isn't there. nowhere did i say there wasn't a problem--i just showed why the problem isn't being addressed.

here's the facts:

<ul><li>the average joe sixpack doesn't care about the $100 FRN because he doesn't ever see them. <li>the folks who control the design of the banknotes aren't interested in making changes because joe sixpack (their primary constituent) doesn't care, and because they know changes have worldwide consequences. they fear the devil they don't know more than the devil they do know.</ul>

what's so hard to understand about that?!!?

That's what I don't understand. If you don't care about how bad counterfeiting is, counterfeit 20 dollar bills do exist. Isnt' that one of the bills that any average joe would use?

True, you can't just change a design right away or it would be too radical worldwide, which I mentioned earlier on. But I don't understand either - if you just let this rolling, you are going to let the counterfeiters troll the banks. This is 2005, not 1970s, where an average joe would have more than enough resources to make a "copy" at least.

I seriously wonder what the directors of the Printing Bureau are thinking...