US Patent 7860603 Medicaments container with medicament authentication mechanism

Methods and apparatus for authenticating medicaments stored within a medicament container. In one embodiment, a medicament container comprises a scanner adapted to scan a medicament unit and provide data indicative of at least one physical characteristic of the medicament unit. This data may comprise the color, size, shape, and/or chemical composition of the medicament unit for the purposes of determining whether the medicament unit bears one or more features of a medicament unit prescribed to a requester. In some embodiments, the data is used to create a determination as to whether the medicament is counterfeit based upon one or more data comparisons.