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Apple Sued Over Alleged Face ID Patent Infringement

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TrinamiX, a subsidiary of the German chemical giant BASF, is suing Apple in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, accusing the company of infringing seven patents related to face authentication technology used in Face ID.

face id
In its complaint, first reported by Reuters, trinamiX said it spent years developing technology to stop people from fooling face unlock systems with a photo, a fake mask, or a silicone copy of someone's face.

The complaint says Apple's original version of ‌Face ID‌, introduced with the iPhone X in 2017, did not use trinamiX's technology, but that newer iPhones and iPads do. TrinamiX's system is designed to tell real skin apart from things like photos or masks, essentially adding a check that catches fakes conventional optical face scanning methods would miss.

The complaint alleges that "Apple knew or should have known of the high probability that updating its iPhones and iPads to incorporate ‌Face ID‌ using material and skin detection" infringed seven trinamiX patents, causing "substantial damages and irreparable injury." The seven patents cover two areas: detecting skin during face unlock and identifying what material something is made of.

TrinamiX names a broad swath of Apple devices as accused products, including the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16, iPhone 16e, ‌iPhone 16‌ Plus, ‌iPhone 16‌ Pro, ‌iPhone 16‌ Pro Max, iPhone 17, iPhone 17e, iPhone 17 Pro, ‌iPhone 17 Pro‌ Max, iPhone Air, 11-inch iPad Pro (4th generation), 12.9-inch ‌iPad Pro‌ (6th generation), and the 11- and 13-inch ‌iPad Pro‌ models with the M4 and M5 chips.

TrinamiX is asking the court to find that Apple infringed its patents, to block Apple from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the accused products, and to award damages and attorneys' fees. The company has requested a jury trial. The full complaint is available via IP Fray.

Tags: Face ID Guide, Apple Lawsuits, Patent Lawsuits

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Top Rated Comments

A
Archipelagos
3 hours ago at 08:01 am
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.
Score: 22 Votes (Like | Disagree)
wanha Avatar
wanha
3 hours ago at 07:54 am
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.
Score: 19 Votes (Like | Disagree)
N
neuropsychguy
3 hours ago at 08:06 am
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: It looks like 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
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.

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.

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 in 2019/2021 and that Apple wasn't already headed that way with their development.

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.
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Criss P. Avatar
Criss P.
3 hours ago at 08:27 am
Worth pointing out before everyone piles on Apple: all seven patents were granted in 2025/2026. The iPhone 15 shipped in September 2023. So for a good chunk of the "accused products" list, Apple was selling those phones before trinamiX held a single one of these patents. At most this is a damages fight over post-grant sales, not the decade-long theft the complaint implies.
The bigger issue is that this is anti-spoofing for a system Apple built from scratch. Apple shipped Face ID with attention detection and mask rejection in 2017. trinamiX's own filing concedes the original Face ID didn't use their technology, which is a strange admission if you're claiming to have invented the concept of telling skin from a mask. The claims will live or die on whether there's prior art before their 2019 priority date, and there was a lot of liveness-detection research floating around by then.
Filing in Midland, Texas, in the Western District, is what companies do when they want a quick trial in front of a plaintiff-friendly patent docket, not what companies do when they're confident in the merits. If BASF thought Apple copied them, why wait until a full patent portfolio matured and three iPhone generations were on the market before saying a word?
Apple has real IP problems sometimes, but this doesn't look like one of them.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
M
MrSnirf
3 hours ago at 07:55 am
This is ridiculous but I'll allow it. Apple loves suing for ridiculous things too so its fair. I do hope the patent gets invalidated.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
N
neuropsychguy
3 hours ago at 08:00 am

So it took them 9 years to figure this out - since the iPhone X?
No. That’s covered near the top of MacRumor’s article: “The complaint says Apple's original version of Face ID, introduced with the iPhone X in 2017, did not use trinamiX's technology, but that newer iPhones and iPads do.”

iPhone 15 and newer.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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