14 DAY TRIAL // The United States Patent & Trademark Office has published a patent application by Apple Inc. which details the fingerprint-recognition technology it owns following the acquisition of AuthenTec.
The invention, credited to Dale R. Setlak (co-founder and VP of Research at AuthenTec), is titled “Finger Sensor Having Pixel Sensing Circuitry for Coupling Electrodes and Pixel Sensing Traces and Related Methods.”
The patent details a finger sensor which may include “pixels, pixel sensing traces each associated with a respective pixel, and electrodes overlying the pixel sensing traces.”
The application is highly technical, but it does include more humane literature, such as an explanation as to why fingerprint sensing / matching is a reliable technique for personal identification or verification.
“In particular, a common approach to fingerprint identification involves scanning a sample fingerprint or an image thereof and storing the image and/or unique characteristics of the fingerprint image,” says Apple.
“The characteristics of a sample fingerprint may be compared to information for reference fingerprints already in a database to determine proper identification of a person, such as for verification purposes,” according to the filing.
Apple is reportedly planning to include this fingerprint sensor in its iPhone 5S revision. The sensor could be located underneath the phone’s Home button.