Polymark Systems was founded in 2024 to bring integrity to things via the application of a software security infrastructure based upon innovative thin film polymers that are unique, non-cloneable and small.   Objects with a ‘polymark’ will have integrity, verifiable owners, and provenance.

We have chosen the name Polymark to mean a ‘Polymer’ material used to ‘Mark’ a physical object, and importantly Systems to mean the associated infrastructure required to utilize this unique polymer film in many applications.     Polymark has exclusively licensed intellectual property in the field of physically unclonable multilayer polymer films for use in security and identification systems from Case Western Reserve University which was developed under National Science Foundation grants.   These form the basis for our security system of security films/labels, security system, and reader-acceptance devices.   However, we envision broad applicability of these core technologies and see that the best security systems are those embedded in the fabric of real-world transaction, provenance, and supply chain systems.   Thus, we are positioned with core technology and expertise to co-develop and partner with organizations across many industries to most effective solve the myriad problem of fakes.

Increasingly we are finding that things are fake.  In a 2021 OECD report (“Global Trade in Fakes”), the global trade in fake goods was a more than $500B issue and growing with the growth in trade.   But along with fake goods in international trade, we are seeing more - from fake sports & concert tickets, to fake QR & barcodes, to fake goods from returns and in the supply chain at Amazon, to fakes in higher value aircraft, art, pharmaceutical, and military supply chains.  Then in a clever way, fraudsters are mounting phishing attacks on consumers with smart phones.   This cybersecurity threat is created by scanning what appears to be authentic QR codes but are fake, directing the smart phone to phishing sites. Fakes are increasingly turning up and we continue to rely upon aged (barcodes) and expensive (RFID chip) technology to address security & provenance in supply chains that run right up to the consumer.  

So, we believe we have a better way to bring secure digital technologies to physical goods by providing better identification, authentication of goods, improved integrity in supply chains, and better data.