BIO-key Patent Could Capitalize on In-Display Sensor Trend

“Essentially, it’s designed to use facial and fingerprint recognition to enable continuous, passive biometric authentication of a smartphone user.”

BIO-key has been granted a patent that it believes could be highly valuable to the company given current trends in mobile biometrics market.

Entitled, “Utilization of Biometric Data”, the patent was first filed in 2015, and has now been officially awarded by the US Patent and Trademark Office. Essentially, it’s designed to use facial and fingerprint recognition to enable continuous, passive biometric authentication of a smartphone user. Facial recognition can operate through any standard smartphone camera, while continuous fingerprint recognition is facilitated by in-display fingerprint sensors that would read the user’s biometrics as they naturally interact with the smartphone screen.

Of course, in-display fingerprint sensors are not yet a common smartphone feature – but they could be soon. This year has seen the emergence of the world’s first smartphones to feature this kind of technology; currently, there are only a small handful of these devices, none of which are yet available in North America, but there are signs that the trend is catching on. Meanwhile, with Apple having boosted the popularity of mobile facial recognition through the Face ID system of its iPhone X, a growing number of consumers are getting used to the idea of face-scanning authentication.

Applying these technologies to continuous authentication would enhance the end user experience by ensuring that the mobile device always knows who is using it. Thus there would be no need to interrupt things like mobile transactions or bank account access with specific user authentication sessions.

In a statement announcing the patent award, BIO-key asserted that it aims to “capitalize” on the in-display fingerprint sensor trend, adding, “BIO-key believes the patent claims are broad enough to be applied to biometric sensors located anywhere on a device.” BIO-key CTO Mira LaCous also noted that this technology could offer enterprise authentication applications, asserting, “we are excited by its potential to drive growth in biometric integration and utilization across a variety of applications.”

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June 19, 2018 – by Alex Perala