Slashdot Mirror
Iris Recognition To Take Off
An anonymous reader writes "Looks like iris recognition is about to explode. Turns out, a major patent held by iris recognition leader Iridian is expiring, and that's leading a stampede of start-ups and VCs into this space."
It's not often that you read about a company's patent expiring being likely to benefit it financially. Quite interesting.
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I believe iris recognition takes some time to verfiy the identity of the person as the person has to stand close to a certain point and then the scanner would scan the eye. So this will take more time than pulling your card out and swipping it and walking through the doors. Therefore this tech will only be used in high security area and most of them I guess are already using it.
What does your Credit Report look like?
1. You can change your password but you can't change your iris.
2. If you are threatened with violence, you can tell the attacker your password, but would you want to give them your eye?
I'll probably be modded down for this...
If patents lasted as long as copyright, we wouldn't be discussing this.
You don't know anything about the patent in question. How much did Iridian sink into developing it? How much have they made back from it? How much would they have made back if this flood of copycats came immediately after they announced their discovery?
Regardless of what you may think of iris recognition, this is proof of how the patent system doesn't work. The technology for this has probably been around for 20 years, but it hasn't been able to be used because some shithead corporation owned a patent. This enabled them to browbeat competitors out of existence, and only now that the patent is nearing expiration can anything "innovative" happen.
Out of curiousity, does anyone know if iris recognition is defeated by contact lenses? I'm guessing that normal corrective lenses might be OK, but I have difficulty imagining iris recognition working through lenses that modify the color of eyes and other such. Will airport security be demanding that people remove their contact lenses prior to the security screening next?
Where do these people come from? Do they exist in the real world? I've never met anyone who actually thinks like this. This HAS to be a troll, there's no way it can be real.
Don't say that. A side effect of a free and creative society is that a lot of very weird ideas show up. Some of them go away, and others are adopeted becasue they really do make more sense.
And why should tax-payers pay for this? Do you know how much corporations make? You're talking about maybe DOUBLING the tax burden just so cheapskates like you don't have to pay to licence patented technology.
I believe you can more articulately argue your objection by noting that the proposed system would place a burden of paying for an invention upon those that do not directly profit from it--thus, as I noted, going against capitalist principals.
Any inventor/writer/musician should be free to file a claim with the restitution bureau.
So in your opinion the power that now rests with consumers and shareholders should instead rest with bureaucrats, assigned by the State to decide the fate of inventors based on "value to society"?
In Communist East Germany, if you wanted a car, the only choice was the ridiculously inefficient and simple Trabant, because decisionmakers felt that the people did not need better cars. Initiating things like our home computers and the Internet is quite impossible in such systems, because you can't convince a state bureaucrat of the value of such an invention by describing it. To be a good bureaucrat you need to be cautious and exact, not bold and imaginative. If a state bureaucrat takes bold leaps with the taxpayer's money, he's not doing his job right.
I respect the bureaucrats, they do important work. But it's not their job to be visionaries. Your arrangement sounds quite horrible to me.
-- Terrorism may have turned the United States into a nation of fear and aggression, but it won't succeed in Europe.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
You are muddled on cause on effect. The US patent office has developed a false liberality which is unjust. The "tear shedder" is absolutely right when he says: "More often than not, patents give the discoverer/holder an unfair advantage that gives them the power to gouge the public and make a killing."
Take the Eolas plug-in patent. Does your browser support plug-ins? Then for years, you may have used it illegally, according to the USPTO. (Thankfully that one patent is now invalidated)
Regarding the Slashdot article we are discussing, here's the first Iridian patent from the eighties: Iris patent
It covers AUTOMATION of an existing manual process - iris recognition - that opthalmologists and common people do day in and day out. (Note how it says _multiple_ pictures may be used of the iris driven to different dilations). Even you have probably done this - remember the Afghan girl on the cover of National Geographic, and her followup picture decades later, taken veiled, showing only her eyes? How can a patent on all possible way to automate this process be granted? See end of the patent statement which says:
Although the present invention has been described in connection with a plurality of preferred embodiments thereof, many other variations and modifications will now become apparent to those skilled in the art. It is preferred, therefore, that the present invention be limited not by the specific disclosure herein, but only by the appended claims.
Now see this more recent patent granted to Iridian Handheld iris imaging apparatus and method . It references their first patent, and now covers handheld scanners -- the type security patrolmen might use at a stadium or airport. Ironically, it was issued on 9/11.
Now see the end of this patent:
Although illustrated and described herein with reference to certain specific embodiments, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that the invention is not limited to the embodiments specifically disclosed herein. Those skilled in the art also will appreciate that many other variations of the specific embodiments described herein are intended to be within the scope of the invention as defined by the following claims.
So industry is unfairly restrained a few decades more by this patent -- and this will hold back God knows how many real improvements to security. Happy now?
> To say Bill Gates doesn't deserve all the money he as gotten bespoils
> the name of a great entrepreneur.
He probably deserved much of it, but to say he deserved "all the money" he got is foolish, given the company he led was convicted and forced to compensate others in multiple cases, and Gates was personally fined in the anti-trust lawsuit.
> I'm sure it's Bush's fault too.
No. I support Bush. Your opinion gives him a bad name.
Thanks for briefly stating your opinion. Some questions/comments:
1) Why is it ironic that the patent was issued on 9/11?
2) Yes, Microsoft and Bill are convicted monopolists. Rather than dispute that (which I could) I will just say that he paid the fine.
3) I support the US patent office and I give Bush a bad name? Huh?
4) Automation of a manual process seems like a reasonable patent to me and the US patent office... Their patent also include preferred embodiments and boundaries. You included a pretty big ellipsis...
First of all let me congratulate you for trying to put a bit more thought into what you are doing, than, say, any major electronic voting machine company did. But, I still think you will be doing your customers a disservice in the long run, whatever benefits they may derive in the short run.
Rant: It doesn't do me any good to tell you to abandon what you're doing, because I know that the only thing that will happen is that a less ethically constrained individual will just take your place, whether at your company or at one of the IP-farms, and then it will be implemented even less competently. I realize this idea simply won't be prevented from happening while there is a mindless sheep herd of IP lawyers who all smell taller grass in another field guiding this ouija-board mental process along.
Even if you have a thousand obscure tricks I still think that people's iris-scan data streams will be intercepted or spoofed and become public information in spite of your best efforts to prevent it.
Once biometric data is public, a biometric measurement is no longer of value as a guarantor of identity because at that point anyone else could be sending it down the wire.
Then, rather than learn their lesson, the IP-lawyer-drones will scurry off and repeat the same mistake on another part of the body, probably the inside of the colon at some point...