Apple Sued Over Alleged Face ID Patent Infringement

TrinamiX, a subsidiary of the German chemical giant BASF, is suing Apple in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, accusing the company of infringing seven patents related to face authentication technology used in Face ID. In its complaint, first reported by Reuters, trinamiX said it spent years developing technology to stop people from fooling face unlock systems with a photo, a fake mask, or a silicone copy of someone's face. The complaint says Apple's original version of ‌Face ID‌, introduced with the iPhone X in 2017, did not use trinamiX's technology, but that newer iPhones and iPads do. TrinamiX's system is designed to tell real skin apart from things like photos or masks, essentially adding a check that catches fakes conventional optical face scanning methods would miss. The complaint alleges that "Apple knew or should have known of the high probability that updating its iPhones and iPads to incorporate ‌Face ID‌ using material and skin detection" infringed seven trinamiX patents, causing "substantial damages and irreparable injury." The seven patents cover two areas: detecting skin during face unlock and identifying what material something is made of. iPhone 16, iPhone 16e, ‌iPhone 16‌ Plus, ‌iPhone 16‌ Pro, ‌iPhone 16‌ Pro Max, iPhone 17, iPhone 17e, iPhone 17 Pro, ‌iPhone 17 Pro‌ Max, iPhone Air, 11-inch iPad Pro (4th generation), 12.9-inch ‌iPad Pro‌ (6th generation), and the 11- and 13-inch ‌iPad Pro‌ models with the M4 and M5 chips. IP Fray. Tags: Face ID, Apple Lawsuits, Patent Lawsuits This article, "Apple Sued Over Alleged Face ID Patent Infringement" first appeared on MacRumors.com Discuss this article in our forums

Read it at MacRumors ↗

← Front page