Apple tries to patent facial recognition Apple has asked the US Patent and Trademark Office to grant it the rights to produce facial-recognition features for iOS devices. Apple’s patent application, filed in 2014 and published Thursday, describes a system for selecting contacts via facial recognition and then tagging their faces in photos. This, Apple argues, will …
Are they really trying to claim they invented facial recognition?
Facial recognition has been around for years, heck early working prototypes of it were probable being tested/worked on before apple even released the first iOS.
If they get this patent successfully, then its simply more proof of a failed patent system.
Who's got bets they want this so they can sue Bookface and other currently working facial recognition software for royalties?
No, they really aren't. They are patenting a particular way of using it, which doesn't claim they invented all the math behind how to do it. I didn't read the patent so I don't know how unique it is (probably not very, like 99% of tech patents) but the patent only covers what the claims in the patent say it does.
Whether or not this patent describes a novel way of utilizing facial recognition, when Google or Facebook has a facial recognition patent the Reg's yellow journalists don't hype it up with a misleading headline to make it sound like they are "patenting facial recognition".
Oh DougS, you truth teller. You don't expect to get points around here for simply stating facts. No, no, no. You have to be a bit more like Harry Enfield's Frank down the pub.
"If Tim Cook comes round my gaff, with his gold Apple watch, an 'is oversized handjobbie, an then start's photographing my 'ouse, without my permission, and then that iCloud thing starts slurping up his picture of my 'ouse, with my kids at the windows, who might be getting ready for bed, the dirty git. And then he sends a little email, to one of his minions,..
"Yer, is minions Frank, don't trust them minions, there all like bigheaded and think they're cleverer than us"
"And then tells his minion, to submit a design patent, ON MY HOUSE, THAT I DESIGNED MYSELF, AND BUILT WITH MY BARE 'ANDS, I'D SAY OI, TIM, NOOOOO!. You might be able to do that when your living in your spaceship, but not ere, NOT IN FRONT OF MY KIDS AND MY WIFE. NOW TAKE YOUR OVERPRICED BIT OF TAT AND GET OFF ME LAWN AND GO AND DESIGN YOUR OWN HOUSE, YOU OVERRATED OVEREDUCATED YANKY-SPANK."
The entire security camera & security software business has been involved in Facial Recognition for many years. All those companies have been vigorously protecting their intellectual property. Since there are so many involved it seems very unlikely that there is no prior art of how to recognize faces with cameras and software.
Unless the USPTO still thinks you can patent anything by tacking the words "on a mobile phone" onto the prior work.
Unless the USPTO still thinks you can patent anything by tacking the words "on a mobile phone" onto the prior work...
Yep, you pretty much nailed it. Kinda reminds me of that silly game you play with the fortunes in fortune cookies, where you read the fortune with the words "in bed" after it.
Next week, I'm filing a patent for software which allows me to fry bacon -- on a mobile phone.
"Next week, I'm filing a patent for software which allows me to fry bacon -- on a mobile phone"... "In bed".
Sounds messy, and I'd definitely stick to electric rather than gas, if only for safety reasons. But happy to bring along a couple of slices of bread and the HP sauce.
"automatically find a person's contacts in an image and share the photos with those contacts."
After actually reading the article it sounds like the patent is more about "automagically" sharing a photo with the subjects, if they are in the photographer's contacts. I've no idea if that's been done before?
Don't let that get in the way of a good Apple / USPTO rant though :P
So you're saying they are taking Faceborg's automatic tag recommendation feature and applying magic Applesauce to make it new and palatable patentable?
I'll ask you the same question I always ask similar trolls: Name one instance where Apple ever sued someone over violating an Apple patent which Apple didn't use in their own products. So far no one has ever been able to come up with a single example.
Apple doesn't patent stuff to "stop other people from doing something useful", and never has. Like all companies, they patent a lot of stuff they don't end up using, but Apple never bothers to defend such patents, because they don't care about you doing something they decided against doing.
Apple launched their own facial recognition system in iPhoto just 3 months after Picasa started doing it.
It appeared with iLife '09 in January 2009, Google added it to Picasa in September 2008.
As the company that created Picasa's facial recognition have patents on their system it's not likely that (after seven and a half years) Apple is patenting the same thing.
It appears to be about linking recognised faces to other recognised faces. Why? Who needs it?
(Unless Apple is starting a secret automated dating service.)
IR LEDs fitted to the peak or a baseball cap are usually enough to render facial recognition useless - at night. (1 watt IR LEDs fitted around a number plate will 'blind' Plod's national number plate tracking facility - even during the daylight hours.)
For daytime use, heavy black eye glass frames do the trick for faces.
They are also using 'gait style' identification, where a computer identifies a person by their walking style. I guess this means we will have to learn John Clease' Ministry of Silly Walks - see: < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ministry_of_Silly_Walks#/media/File:Silly_Walk_Gait.jpg >.
IR LEDs fitted to the peak or a baseball cap are usually enough to render facial recognition useless - at night.
Won't work on iPhones, they have had an IR filter since iPhone 4 or 4s.
1 watt IR LEDs fitted around a number plate will 'blind' Plod's national number plate tracking facility - even during the daylight hours.
That either is not going to work, either due to decent IR filters or because any mobile ANPR system will flag to the officers in the car it has a problem. As the officers can see its actual feed it will be fairly clear that something dodgy is happening and you'll be stopped, and probably fined (AFAIK there are laws against attempts to interfere with reading your plate).
but somehow, I can't see it stopping there.
"Call the witness!"
"Ah, my lord, the witness is unable to be in court today."
"And why is that?"
"Well, my lord, it seems that in photographing the crime, the facial recognition software on his phone recognised one Basher Sluggs and automatically sent a copy of the image to him. Mr Sluggs has since been in contact with the witness, who is currently undergoing facial repair surgery..."
Kodak were working on facial recognition back in the eighties so there is nothing new about facial recognition patents per se.
However it appears that, yet again, Apple is attempting to patent an innovation - not an invention - and basically try to pwn the whole area of linking images to other images via facial recognition. Of course there's nothing new in that as Picasa, amongst others, will group photos by facial recognition.
Maybe Apple should pay some inventors instead of paying lawyers and designers.
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