Apple Sued Over Alleged Face ID Patent Infringement

[alexgowers]

This feels very patent troll-esq. I don't think the idea of checking if someone has blood vessels and skin during authentication is a unique idea in any way and easy to come up with independently. The method would also need to be a carbon copy to hold water. If they can truly show apple duplicated their tech from the patent then yeah pay up but I can not see that being true.

 

[max666]

apple pay billions.

 

[acader]

The sad thing is it’s probs cheaper to infringe than to pay royalties long term.

But what bothers me about this is why wait to raise the lawsuit after allegedly three generations of devices and soon to be four being launched with this infringement?

Money..It's the money. More devices sold in 3 years, more revenue, more for settlement.

 

[jarman92]

The fact that a German company with no significant presence in Texas filed this suit in the Western District of Texas—an infamous haven for patent trolls—tells me everything I need to know about its underlying merits (or lack thereof).

it's moronic that generic ideas are patentable.

We're all lucky the idea of language wasn't patented or we'd all be paying royalties just for speaking, no matter the language.

Generic ideas are very explicitly not patentable—in order to secure a patent, an invention has to be useful, novel, and non-obvious, and the application must describe the invention with enough detail that someone skilled in the field can build/use it without having to invent anything new themselves. That's Patents 101.

The USPTO does a decent job weeding out the non-patentable stuff, and whatever questionable patents do get awarded are almost always invalidated in litigation.

 

[ericinboston]

... why wait to raise the lawsuit after allegedly three generations of devices and soon to be four being launched with this infringement?

1)They wait and wait and wait while the offender (in this case, Apple) keeps thinking they are getting away with it and also earning tons of money. THEN the patent holder sues. Why would you sue on Day 1 when Apple sold, say, 10,000 offending devices when you can wait 6 years and Apple has sold millions upon millions? Bigger payout for the patent holder.

2)I don't know how long a patent holder can sue, but if it's obvious (meaning iPhones are everywhere and people see/use them everywhere) that your patent is likely being used, you should only be given, say, 3 years to file your claim.

 

[ThomasJL]

[sarcasm]
How dare anyone sue Apple! Tim Cook is a saint. He never does anything wrong or unethical.
[/sarcasm]

 

[jarman92]

Money..It's the money. More devices sold in 3 years, more revenue, more for settlement.

I suppose that's possible but its very risky, especially considering they're asking for an injunction—in order to get an injunction a party has to show irreparable harm, which is pretty difficult if it voluntarily waited 3+ years to file suit.

 

[jarman92]

1)They wait and wait and wait while the offender (in this case, Apple) keeps thinking they are getting away with it and also earning tons of money. THEN the patent holder sues. Why would you sue on Day 1 when Apple sold, say, 10,000 offending devices when you can wait 6 years and Apple has sold millions upon millions? Bigger payout for the patent holder.

2)I don't know how long a patent holder can sue, but if it's obvious (meaning iPhones are everywhere and people see/use them everywhere) that your patent is likely being used, you should only be given, say, 3 years to file your claim.

That's not really how this works (see my comment above), and Congress (shockingly) thought of this—the statutory damages window is 6 years. 35 USC § 286.

 

[neuropsychguy]

Wow, thanks. I was about to comment the same thing as @now i see it

I guess that we should relax and take time to read the entire article instead of reading the headline and jumping into the comments.

Where’s the fun in that?

/I almost always read the article before commenting. Maybe that’s why I’m a lot of fun at parties.

 

[I7guy]

[sarcasm]
How dare anyone sue Apple! Tim Cook is a saint. He never does anything wrong or unethical.
[/sarcasm]

No, no, no. Great hyperbole. It’s John Ternus. Either give the credit and blame to cook or give the credit and blame to ternus. But don’t give the blame to cook and the credit to ternus.

 

[Ash Pole]

generic ideas are patentable.

 

[Ash Pole]

Samsung pioneered facial biometric recognition on smartphones…and as usual, Apple was late to the party.

 

[lindros2]

I would bet money that someone used AI to go through their patents and suggest any possible, no matter how fringe or ridiculous, possible infringement and then they ran that AI result through some other calculators and determined the highest value targets and decided suing apple was worth it. This is not a judgment on rightness or wrongness it's just that this infringement is very old and suddenly such an obscure lawsuit appears with very little obvious connection.

welcome to the new world

 

[loopi77]

no idea or clue what this is all about. not defending either side. just wondering, never heard of that company, they seem to have no products, just a claim about some idea an those are identical to a technology, that you can buy in real products since long before their first appearance.
well this is going to be interesting.

 

[bLackjackj]

it's moronic that generic ideas are patentable.

Generic ideas? You clearly have not seen the patents in question!

 

[turbineseaplane]

I have no dog in the hunt.

Everyone loses here other than lawyers.

Let’s get to that new iPad Mini OLED and new AppleTV tomorrow!

I’m ready.

 

[LV426]

I don’t think this is a generic idea. It sounds like the patented tech is the ability to differentiate between real skin and other things. That would definitely be a valuable piece of tech that should be patented and licensed by others.

My eyes can tell the difference between real skin and a latex mask. Obvious patents should be challenged.

 

[leicaman]

What are the chances this company is a stalking horse for Chinese phone makers? Interesting timing it's announced now?

 

[QuarterSwede]

I don’t know the merits of this case. However, trinamiX is not a patent troll in a strict sense. The company produces real products and doesn’t just make money by suing for patent infringement.

However, it looks like the various cited patents weren’t applied for until at least 2024 so I’m not sure how trinamiX thinks it will win. I’ll have to dig around some more to see timelines.

Edit: The original patents were filed in 2019. There were 2021 and later ones that added to and updated earlier ones.

Here's the timeline

2017: Apple introduces Face ID (worked on it well before then, of course)
2019: trinamiX files first material-detection family
2021: trinamiX files skin-detection family
2023: Apple allegedly adds the relevant material/skin-detection functionality
2025–26: U.S. continuation patents issue (trinamiX filing with updates to their 2019 and 2021 filings)
2026: trinamiX sues.

Importantly, trinamiX, unlike some other companies, is not claiming they ever showed their technology to Apple and that Apple 'stole' or copied it. This is an independent-development patent infringement case. It's more along the lines of "you should have checked patents before doing something".

What further complicates this is that Apple certainly has prior art with FaceID in the iPhone X and continued development along the way. The fight might come down to whether trinamiX's particular ways to identify skin was inventive enough in 2019/2021 and that Apple wasn't already headed that way with their development that Apple's work counts as not infringing.

One question about the strength of trinamiX's case is that the company filed in a historically patent-owner-friendly district. The really notorious one is Eastern Texas, but the Western District of Texas is up there. However, the Western District's strongest plaintiff-friendly judge was Judge Albright in Waco, who recently left the federal bench. It's not clear how this will play out.

Excellent post. Just wanted to tell you that I appreciate the research effort.

 

[i-John]

I wonder how TrinamiX picked the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas as their venue for their patent lawsuit? I guess because Texas is between Germany and Cupertino? No other possible reason I’m sure.

Because of how they handle patent cases. The judge that oversees these sort of cases in the district is known to be patent friendly and doesn't drag it out, often fast tracks patent trials.

Apple closed 2 stores in the Eastern District of Texas in 2019 (Frisco and Plano) to avoid patent lawsuits there. It is a patent hotspot and it is well known to almost always fall on the side of the patent holder and normally would give large payouts. By closing the stores there, they no longer had a physical presence and therefore the district had no jurisdiction on patent cases. Western district though covers Austin, so they'd lose out a lot more, as well as the payouts aren't as bad if someone loses.

 

[i-John]

But testing back in 2017 ascertained you could not fool FaceID with a model or facial casting.

That wasn't the case though, as it was shown multiple times that it could be fooled.

 

[i-John]

So apple did it first, yet this patent troll tries to claim since they had the idea they deserve the money. So stupid.

They are not patent trolls, they actually developed the patent.

 

[jsavvy]

My eyes can tell the difference between real skin and a latex mask. Obvious patents should be challenged.

Are you a robot? If not, your eyes don’t matter in this instance.

 

[DerekK]

Apple updated FaceID in iOS 15.4 (back in 2022) to detect and unlock a phone when a person is wearing a mask (likely as a response to everyone wearing masks during COVID).

Use Face ID while wearing a mask with iPhone 12 and later - Apple Support (CA)

With iOS 15.4 or later, you can use Face ID with a mask to unlock your iPhone while wearing a mask.

support.apple.com

The patent(s) trinamiX filed were in 2019 and/or 2021, before Apple made the change.

I haven't read the patents, but it doesn't sound like this is a simple "these guys are right and these guys are wrong" situation.

 

[chrono1081]

They are not patent trolls, they actually developed the patent.

No they're trolls. Apple already had this tech and they demonstrated it in the very first release of FaceID.