Stock material or miscellaneous articles – Composite – Of addition polymer from unsaturated monomers
Reexamination Certificate
1998-09-28
2001-09-25
Thibodeau, Paul (Department: 1773)
Stock material or miscellaneous articles
Composite
Of addition polymer from unsaturated monomers
C428S043000, C428S424200, C428S483000, C428S500000, C428S516000, C283S057000, C283S058000, C283S059000, C283S107000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06294267
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a multilayer film for use in the production of paper-like products such as bank notes, security documents, including travelers and bank checks, and to a method for their production. More particularly, the present invention relates to a multilayer film having the characteristics of the high quality papers typically employed in the production of bank notes and security documents.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
In the production of bank notes, security documents and the like, rag paper has been employed for over 300 years. As is well known, rag paper has several properties which are highly desirable in such applications, including dead foldability, tear resistance, printability, embossability and the inability to the delaminate.
These highly desired properties may be characterized as follows: deadfold is the ability of a substrate to be creased or folded and to retain the fold without opening. Tear resistance is the ability of a substrate to resist both initiated and uninitiated tears and punctures. Printability is the ability of the substrate to adsorb and bond inks used during the lithographic printing process. Embossability is the ability of the substrate to deform under the pressures of the intaglio printing process to form a raised image on the resulting bank note or security document, with the intaglio ink remaining on the raised, deformed region resulting in a high degree of tactility or feel to the bank note or security document. The inability to delaminate is the inability to separate entire layers after lamination. As may be appreciated, these properties combine to give bank notes and the like their familiar feel and functionality.
Banknotes fail for many reasons, including soiling, loss of stiffness, ink degradation and tears/holes. Loss of stiffness results in a banknote which can not be machined processed, i.e. in an automated teller machine (ATM), money changer or verification machine. Ink degradation may result from abrasion and human contact. The recent movement to coins is a direct effort to extend the life of low level denomination notes which are printed in greater quantities than higher denomination notes.
A longer life note would result in less initial printing of new notes, longer circulation life, lower transportation costs to and from point of origin and to and from destruction, lower destruction cost and less sorting of machine readable grades.
With the advent of color copiers and computer graphic scanners, the counterfeiting of bank notes has markedly increased. While there are active programs underway by major currency paper producers to make their substrate more secure through the use of watermarks, metallized threads and optical variable devices (OVD's), such as photochromics, holographics, and diffraction gratings, at this time, these efforts do not appear to hold much promise of thwarting counterfeiters.
A major fitness for use criteria in a security document is to ensure that the substrate cannot be separated to produce a master of each side of the document. Splitting of banknotes is a major counterfeiting strategy in underdeveloped countries. A multilayer security document, Tyvek®, failed in field use because it was possible to split the non-woven document using simple tools in the field.
Plastic substrates offer a major security feature if a clear “window” is incorporated into the bank note. This window would ensure that a scanner or color copier could not copy the note. Additionally, other security features can be incorporated into or onto the bank note, including reverse printing of the note to protect the security devices and the print.
Australian Pat. No. 488,652, discloses an approach to the production of security articles, particularly bank notes, and describes the serious problems which confront conventional bank notes with respect to forgery. The bank note disclosed therein comprises a substrate of opaque thermoplastic sheet material intimately bonded to a web of woven or unwoven thermoplastic fibers, the substrate being printed as desired and having bonded thereon one or more optically-variable security devices. The fibrous web was employed to impart durability, crumple-resistance and tear-strength to the note. Where a security device, such as a Moire pattern, was employed which depended for its optically variable properties upon the transmission of light, it was necessary to punch out a hole in the substrate, insert the device and bond it in place with further layers of transparent plastic sheet material.
Although samples of bank notes formed according to the disclosure of Australian Patent No. 488,652 were said to have performed most satisfactorily with respect to the durability and security of conventional notes, they were found to be rather complex in construction and relatively expensive to produce. Moreover, when transmission security devices were laminated between layers in the substrate, an area of weakness and high stress was created which reduced both durability and security.
Other disclosures relating to anti-counterfeiting techniques include U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,095,217 and 4,281,208, which relate to the use of a liquid crystal device driven by a photovoltaic element, such as a solar cell or an amorphous silicon material.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,472,627 relates to currency or other valuable documents containing a liquid crystal/photovoltaic device which produces a coded display in response to artificial or ambient light. The device can function both as an anti-counterfeiting deterrent and also as a means for permitting a user to easily authenticate the validity of a document containing such a device.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,536,016 discloses a security token, such as a bank note or identity card, which comprised a sheet-like substrate made up from film of transparent biaxially oriented polymer coated with layers of opaque and heat activated adhesive material. The opaque layer is applied in such a way as to leave a transparent area for inspection of a security device, for example, a diffraction grating, incorporated in the polymer film. The substrate could bear printed or other identifying indicia and was protected with an intimately bonded layer of transparent polymeric material.
The substrate employed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,536,016 was based on the use of oriented polypropylene (OPP). After several commemorative bank note printings, while meeting many of the requirements for a bank note substrate, the plastic bank notes were found to fail in three major areas. First, the OPP substrate did not dead fold, causing problems in that the film retains either a flat or curved form, jamming cash registers and automatic handling equipment. The OPP product also did not exhibit the tactility of paper currency, due to the fact that OPP does not emboss well during the intaglio process and was overcoated.
Oriented high density polyethylene films have been employed in the area of plastic packaging. Such films, biaxially oriented to a degree of greater than 6.5 times in both the machine direction (MD) and the transverse direction (TD) are described in British Patent 1,287,527. U.S. Pat. No. 4,680,207 relates to imbalanced biaxially oriented films of linear low density polyethylene oriented up to six times in the machine direction, and up to three times in the transverse direction but less than in the machine direction.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,618,630 relates to a three ply multilayer film structure for the production of banknotes.
While the aforementioned films have been shown to offer certain advantages over the prior art and generally meet the requirements for which they were designed, a need still exists for a film which provides the characteristics of a high quality, rag-type paper of the type typically employed in the production of bank notes and security products.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a multilayer film having the characteristics of a high quality rag paper.
It is an object of the present invention to find a banknote which overcomes traditional failure criteria includi
Ahmed Sheeba
ExxonMobil Oil Corporation
Santini Dennis P.
Simmons T. Dean
Thibodeau Paul
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