Patents In Facial Recognition (Video)

• Published date: 07 July 2022
• Subject Matter: Intellectual Property, Patent
• Law Firm: Photon legal
• Author: Mr Amit Koshal and Swanand Khonde

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Facial recognition software is a technology that can detect and identify a human face by an image or by a video stream or a live stream through cameras. Though the term facial recognition looks fairly simple, it is not! The term facial detection and facial recognition are often confused as being synonymous and are used interchangeably. However, there is a major difference between the two. A facial detection program only detects a face whereas facial recognition detects a face as well as identifies the person.

Figure 1 - Shows the Feature Points of the Face.

The first semi-automatic face recognition system was developed by Woodrow W. Bledsoe under contract to the US Government. This system relied entirely on the potential of the administrator to identify and extract feature points such as eyes, nose, ears and mouth on photographs. This basic idea has been developed upon further by UTC Fire and Security Americas Corp Inc who have patented a "system and method for passive face recognition". Under this technology that is often used for unlocking phones, the software captures the face of a person and registers its features as a model face. With continued use, it begins to fit images with the registered features and generate variations of the registered model face. These variations help the phone in recognising an individual from varied angles and features that were not initially registered. Thus, the software transforms the registered face model to a desired orientation to generate a transformed model face.

A question that you must have pondered upon is whether the facial recognition software shown in Hollywood movies is real? Yes, but to some extent. The idea of facial recognition software in the movies is highly advanced and such technology is still being developed.

Facial recognition software as shown in the movie Mission Impossible

Are the softwares as efficient in real life? No, at present development levels, some factors can throw off face recognition systems. For example, low illumination, image or video quality can lead to false positives. According to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, misidentifications are rampant and even slight changes in camera angles can lead to a false positive result.

However, these softwares could be used in simple tasks of our day to day lives. Organisations can prepare themselves for a post COVID work atmosphere by replacing finger prints for attendance logs with facial recognition software...