What am I missing about this? Couldn't the scammer just replicate the QR code of a legit shop? I thought the point of counterfeit goods was to fool you into buying them instead of the real thing. I guess part of the process would have to be verifying that every shipment of goods received was accurately tracked from a valid "ship from" address, but I have to imagine there's a lot of common warehousing in use for bulk goods. I'm not understanding how the QR code helps solve that.

Maybe a unique bar code per-item that includes some private hash information that makes it unique to the producer? Sort of an electronic signature for physical goods? Then if there's a centralized database, copying the QR codes wouldn't do much good. You might be able to slip in one if it is sold before the real version. But each subsequent copy could be caught.