Demo · sample data

The hologram seal never made it to the web. This is it.

For years, one sticker meant “this is licensed” on the box, in the store, in your hand. Online there is nothing. Any listing can paste an official-looking graphic, and nobody can check it. A CheckMerch badge is the seal for where merch actually sells (the listing, the store, the product page). It answers live from the grant ledger: who holds the rights, who's licensed to produce it, and whether that license is live right now.

Everything on this page is invented: the work, the studio, the licensee. The badge itself is not. Open it and you get a real resolution off the grant ledger, same as any other badge.

checkmerch.io/b/bdg_01k2dk9mvfr8

A listing is live. Its seal should be too.

A printed sticker is trusted forever. A badge is re-read on every load, so a listing can't keep wearing a license that ended.

Licensed product

Work: Haunted Ramen
Rights holder: Aster & Vane Studio
Licensee: Meridian Merch Co.
License: Granted directly by Aster & Vane Studio
Valid: Aug 11, 2026 – Aug 11, 2031
Badge: bdg_01k2dk9mvfr8

Status is live: revoking the license invalidates this badge immediately.

Grant issued, not revoked, inside its term.

What every scan of a legitimate listing returns.

status: active

Public, and safe to be.

No account, no key. Asking whether a product is licensed should never require one. Badge IDs are unguessable and can't be enumerated, so holding one tells you nothing about any other.

The badge shows the parties, the term, and the shops the licensee published as authorized. It does not show the territory, the permitted uses, the commercial terms, or anything about works other than this one. Those stay between the two who signed it.

People get the page. Systems get the JSON.

The same identifier resolves both ways. Someone scanning a hangtag gets the page, a system checking a thousand listings gets the JSON. Neither is a different source of truth.

Read the docs

GET /v1/badges/bdg_01k2dk9mvfr8

{
  "id": "bdg_01k2dk9mvfr8",
  "work_title": "Haunted Ramen",
  "rights_holder": "Aster & Vane Studio",
  "licensee": "Meridian Merch Co.",
  "licensed_by": { "basis": "own_rights" },
  "status": "active",
  "valid_from": "2026-08-11T00:00:00Z",
  "valid_until": "2027-08-11T00:00:00Z"
}

A badge isn't declared. It's minted.

On the web, the counterfeiter's move is to declare. “Official Licensed Merch!” costs nothing to type. A badge can't be typed.

01

The holder issues a grant

Work, use, territory, term.
02

The licensee mints against it

Per SKU or per run. No active grant covering the work, no badge. The registry refuses.
03

The badge goes on the listing

And resolves live for as long as the grant holds.

A counterfeit run has nothing to mint from. That's the entire trick.

One line on the product page.

Same idea as a build badge on a README. The image is generated per request from the grant ledger and served uncached, so what it shows is what is true when the page loads, and clicking it opens the full badge. Paste one line into the PDP template and every listing built from it carries the seal.

Note what the alt text does not say. It names the badge, not the verdict, because alt is pasted once and then never revisited: an alt reading “licensed” would go on saying so after the license was pulled, to the one reader who cannot see the image contradicting it. The status travels inside the image, where it is re-read every load.

On the listing

Product image

Haunted Ramen Tee

Meridian Merch Co.

$32.00

The same image, once the grant moves

Only a live license gets the hologram. The other three drop the iridescence and swap the check for an alert mark, so a dead badge can't pass for a live one at a glance or in a screenshot.

HTML

<a href="https://checkmerch.io/b/bdg_01k2dk9mvfr8">
  <img src="https://checkmerch.io/b/bdg_01k2dk9mvfr8/badge.svg" alt="CheckMerch license status">
</a>

Markdown

[![CheckMerch license status](https://checkmerch.io/b/bdg_01k2dk9mvfr8/badge.svg)](https://checkmerch.io/b/bdg_01k2dk9mvfr8)

Image URL

https://checkmerch.io/b/bdg_01k2dk9mvfr8/badge.svg

It prints, too.

The same badge renders as a QR seal for the hangtag, the garment, the box. The physical seal inherits the web one, not the other way around. On a shipped product it answers what matters there: was this made under a real license, by whom, minted against which grant.

Seen a badge you think is being misused? Report it. That form is real, unlike everything else on this page.

Every licensed run, verifiable in real time.

Talk to us For rights holders