LaserCard Corporation is a leading provider of secure ID solutions to governments and commercial clients around the world, and also manufactures a wide range of advanced, secure identity documents. These ID documents include a broad set of contact and contactless technologies in combination with optical memory. LaserCard Corporation’s wholly-owned German subsidiary, Challenge Card Design Plastikkarten GmbH (“CCD”), with offices in Rastede and Ratingen, Germany, manufactures and offers a wide range of high quality specialty cards, plus card personalization and ID management solutions under the CCD and Cards & More brands. CCD provides advanced-technology specialty card manufacturing capabilities to serve the European, Middle Eastern, African and Asian markets. Our cards and systems are used in countries around the world, such as the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Angola, Italy, India, Costa Rica and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for demanding applications including government service provision and facility access.
LaserCard Corporation (formerly known as Drexler Technology Corporation, until October 1, 2004) was incorporated under the laws of the State of California on July 23, 1968 and was reincorporated as a Delaware corporation on June 24, 1987. LaserCard Corporation, a Delaware corporation, is primarily a holding company that conducts all its business operations through its two wholly-owned subsidiaries, Challenge Card Design Plastikkarten GmbH (“CCD”) and LaserCard Corporation, a California corporation. Our mailing address and executive offices are located at 1875 North Shoreline Boulevard, Mountain View, California 94043 and our telephone number is (650) 969-4428.
Trademarks. LaserCard® is the Company’s registered trademark. Optical/SmartTM card, OpticalProximityTM card, ConciergeCardTM, OptiChipTM, LaserPassTM, Embedded HologramHDTM, Optical IDLockTM and LaserBadgeTM are our trademarks. We may also refer to trademarks of other corporations and organizations in this document.
Our primary product is the LaserCard optical memory card which is a credit-card sized, data storage card—invented, patented, developed and manufactured by us. Along with its ability to record, update and store up to 2.86 megabytes of user data, this unique card offers multiple data-security features, can be carried in a wallet and is highly resistant to counterfeiting and data tampering. This makes the LaserCard® ideal for portable and secure data storage and for cardholder identification.
Current applications for the LaserCard include identification cards for citizens, non-citizen permanent residents, foreign workers, and border crossings, as well as vehicle registration.
Programs include:
United States Permanent Resident Card (“Green Card”)
Italian citizen ID card
Italian foreign resident card
Government ID cards in Italy
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia national ID card
Vehicle registration in a few states in India
Foreign Resident ID Card program in Costa Rica
A developing program in Angola for national ID cards
FINANCIAL INFORMATION ABOUT SEGMENTS
Our three reportable segments are: (1) optical memory cards, (2) drives, systems and enabling services (which we formerly called the “optical memory card drives” segment), including read/write drives, maintenance, systems and enabling services, and (3) specialty cards and printers. The segments were determined based on the information used by the chief operating decision maker. The optical memory cards and drives, systems and enabling services reportable segments are not strategic business units which offer unrelated products and services; rather, these reportable segments utilize compatible technology and are marketed jointly. Specialty cards and printers is a strategic business unit offering at times unrelated products and at times related products with the other reportable segments.
NARRATIVE DESCRIPTION OF BUSINESS
LaserCard Corporation is a leading provider of secure ID solutions to governments and commercial clients around the world and also manufactures a wide range of advanced, secure identity documents. These ID documents include a broad set of contact and contactless technologies in combination with optical memory. LaserCard’s wholly-owned German subsidiary, CCD, with offices in Rastede and Ratingen, Germany, manufactures and offers a wide range of high quality specialty cards, plus card personalization and ID management solutions under the CCD and Cards & More brands. Our cards and systems are used in countries around the world, such as the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Angola, Italy, India, Costa Rica and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for demanding applications including government service provision and facility access.
LaserCard; A Secure Counterfeit-resistant Credential
Our LaserCard optical memory card is a secure, counterfeit-resistant credential which is currently used by national governments primarily in secure identification applications.
Digital data is recorded in an irreversible process so that ID information on a legitimate card cannot be fraudulently altered for criminal purposes. Each implementation for secure ID is customized to the issuer’s own specifications. Key characteristics of the card’s memory and the issuing and inspection hardware are matched. To date, LaserCard’s users believe that the hurdle for would-be card counterfeiters is so high that such persons instead would seek some other vulnerability points in the issuance process.
Another security benefit of optical memory is its ability to be permanently marked with visible, high-resolution micro images and security patterns in the optical media itself at resolutions up to 24,000 dots per inch. These features, which cannot be accurately simulated by counterfeiters, are used by inspectors and forensic specialists for both unaided and aided visual card authentication.
We also can create a “laser-etched” eye visible image in the media, irreversibly marking the digital recording media with the visible identity of the card holder — a unique security feature among all machine readable card technologies. This method of permanently “etching” a facial image in the media is used to verify the authenticity of other printed or laser engraved facial images on the card’s surfaces enabling a method to determine tampering of these images. We have recently released Personalized Embedded HologramHD™ that features a larger, high-definition photographic quality image, so the feature itself can be used for ID verification, while still serving the verification function. The feature is essentially impossible to copy or reproduce and cannot be altered thus providing a very high level of counterfeit resistance.
Personalized Embedded HologramHD is a component of LaserCard’s unique document security package, known as Optical IDLock™, a highly sophisticated layering and blending of overt, covert and forensic security and identity management features. These features collectively make each card uniquely counterfeit resistant, tamper evident and permanently locked to the identity of the cardholder. We believe that no other technology can deliver this level of security tied to the individual cardholder’s identity.
Our Optical/Smart™ card offering combines the security and capacity of optical memory with the active transactional capability of an IC chip. The chip can be any ISO 7816 series standard module and is embedded into the optical card base stock using traditional milling and embedding techniques.
Typical applications for the Optical/Smart™ card include the provision of e-government services via the chip while the optical memory acts as a visual and secure card authentication feature, backs up the chip in case of failure or tampering, and stores an audit trail of events in the card’s life for security and forensic purposes. In addition, the optical memory can store a suite of original biometric images (for example, face, fingerprints and irises) to provide a means of ID verification across other government and private sector applications. Given that optical memory can be used securely off-line, it is not necessary to have access to Public Key Infrastructure that is necessary for smart cards, an extremely costly and complex system, at every transaction point thus enhancing the over-all cost-effectiveness of optical memory.