Having spare keys to your office can help to prevent office lockouts, which in turn can affect commercial security, but they come with their own particular risks. In this blog entry, the New Orleans key duplication and New Orleans commercial locksmith service experts here at Liberty Locksmith New Orleans will detail the important things to consider before office key copying service.
Can ‘Do Not Duplicate’ Keys be Copied?
The truth is that keys with ‘do not duplicate’ affixed to them can still be copied. This term has no legal force. You might wonder why keys still have this engraved on them? This is to try to control employees and former tenants from not duplicating the keys. However, this doesn’t help much, and might even create a false sense of security. If you truly want to protect your office, create and use a patented key system or utilize other strategies.
How to Know if a Key Can Be Copied
If you want to make duplicate keys, Liberty Locksmith can assist you. However, there are some keys that locksmiths need special information to copy. Car keys can be made by locksmiths according to your car’s unique model, make, brand, and year. Safe keys can be duplicated, but it sometimes takes a bit of time based on the key. Yale keys – in both standard and small – can be duplicated by any professional locksmith. Large Chubb keys can also be copied, but this might also take a bit of extra time. Padlock keys and mortise keys can be copied as well!!
What keys cannot be copied?
Some restricted keys cannot be copied by anyone besides the original key manufacturer. These keys are protected by United States patent law, which may level an exorbitant $10,000 fine for any illegal key copying. Restricted keys are hard to duplicate technically, requiring both permission and the use of special tools.
Can already-copied keys be copied?
This depends. If the original key is lost, a copy can be made using a key duplicate. However, the more key copies are made, the lower the key quality will be. The third copied key will be less superior than the second, and the same applies moving forward. Even many of the most modern key copying devices cannot PERFECTLY reproduce the dimensions of key shapes, so all key copies will have slight deviations from the original, and the more copies are made of copies the quality of the key will be lowered, eventually being either unable to operate the lock or potentially damaging the lock mechanism.