Plastics manufacturers are all too familiar with the problem of having their products counterfeited. Intellectual property is a hot-button issue. But here's a new twist -- researchers in England say they've devised a way to add anti-counterfeiting features to plastic products during the molding process

The news comes from the Warwick Manufacturing Group at the University of Warwick. In a news release from the school, lead researcher Professor Gordon Smith compared the technology to a watermark, and said it could cost less than 1 percent of the total cost of manufacturing a product.

"There is an enormous amount of interest in anti-counterfeiting technology for plastic products. We at the University of Warwick are working on several processes to prevent plastic components being copied and this 'in mould' process is the first of them to be developed for use," Smith said.

"For commercial reasons we cannot detail collaborators but we are now exploring its use with one company that is plagued by the failure of a counterfeit plastic based safety critical product which is made to look exactly like their safety critical product and therefore damages their reputation as well as losing them sales."

Smith believes manufacturers of DVDs and CDs used in the entertainment and computing markets will be interested in the technology.