BASF Sues Apple Over Seven trinamiX Patents Behind Face ID Anti-Spoofing

The German chemical group BASF has sued Apple over Face ID, asserting seven patents held by its trinamiX sensing unit in the US District Court in Midland, Texas.

The patents cover material and skin detection, the technique that lets a face authentication system tell living tissue from a photograph, a 3D-printed mask or a silicone replica. trinamiX says in the complaint that it spent the past decade building the technology to close a security gap that leaves conventional face recognition open to spoofing.

The unit traces its origins to 2010, when BASF scientists working on organic solar cells made discoveries that led to early three-dimensional camera prototypes. BASF spun trinamiX out as a standalone entity in 2014 to develop 3D and material sensing, and the complaint says it now holds more than 800 granted or pending patents worldwide.

trinamiX has also published work on under-display face authentication for OLED panels, shown at a Snapdragon Summit in 2022 and since shipped in Android handsets. Those patents are not part of this suit, though Apple is widely reported to be developing its own under-display Face ID.

The complaint does not claim infringement from the start. It says Apple was not using the patented technology when it launched Face ID with the iPhone X in 2017, and that the problem arose later, once the company updated its devices. The accused products are the iPhone 15, iPhone 16, iPhone 17, iPad Pro and others. Apple “knew or should have known of the high probability” that adding material and skin detection infringed the seven patents, the complaint says, causing “substantial damages and irreparable injury.”

BASF is the largest chemical producer in the world, and the claim does not come from a non-practising entity of the kind that usually brings patent suits over consumer hardware. Its portfolio extends well beyond chemicals and agriculture into sensing and materials.

The suit seeks unspecified damages and a halt to further infringement.

Midland sits in a district known for moving patent cases quickly, a function of its comparatively light criminal docket. Apple sold $196.5 billion of iPhones and $21.7 billion of iPads in the nine months to 27 June.

Face authentication has been the subject of mounting legal pressure on Apple from several directions, including a faceprint class action over the Photos app that the company has asked a judge to end.

Sources: Reuters, AppleInsider

–

By Cass Kennedy