I think the appeal here is the chip is uncloneable, unlike ordinary rfid tags, so counterfeit products can't just clone it serial number. I wonder how useful it is in practice though. Unlike RFID tags which can be scanned by phones, customers probably don't have the proprietary scanner in hand to scan this chip, right? How do you know your cheese wheel is fake or not in that situation. You'll probably have to trust the store you bought it from, but if the store want to sell fake product, adding this chip to real products probably won't prevent those fraudulent stores from selling fake products to their customers. Am I missing something here?

Not near field, since it uses photovoltaic cells with a pulsed laser for power.