ALBUQUERQUE -- Lasertechnics Inc. said its Sandia Imaging Systems unit will use a Xerox Corp. technology to produce fraud-resistant credit and identification cards.
Albuquerque-based Lasertechnics obtained a license for Xerox's PaperWare software toolkit, which enables the encoding and decoding of DataGlyphs on cards. Xerox's desktop document sysmms division developed DataGlyphs, which store digital codes in a high-density slanted-line pattern not readable by the naked eye.
Sandia'Imaging, based in Dallas, puts DataGlyphs forward as an alternative to both magnetic stripe and smart card technologies. At a density of 300 dots an inch, one side of a typical wallet-size card can hold 1,600 characters of data, less than half of most current smart cards but well above the 100 typical of magnetic stripes.
Sandia also plans to relicense the technology to other manufacturers interested in "chip-less" smart cards. It said the technology is a middle-ground between stripes and chips, does not require the setting aside of "real estate" on the card as stripes and chips do, and lends itself to holding security features, visual images, or information that would not normally fit on cards.
