trinamiX accuses Apple of infringing Face ID skin-detection patents Germany-based BASF subsidiary trinamiX has sued Apple in U.S. federal court, alleging that Face ID technology in newer iPhones and iPads infringes seven patents covering techniques for distinguishing human skin from masks and other materials during facial authentication. The lawsuit, filed September 3 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, alleges that Apple incorporated patented material and skin detection technology into Face ID without authorization. The case was filed by trinamiX GmbH and trinamiX Sensing LLC. The dispute is narrower than simply that trinamiX invented Face ID or facial anti-spoofing technology generally. Apple introduced Face ID with the iPhone X in 2017, and trinamiX acknowledges in its complaint that the original system did not use the technology covered by the patents it is asserting. Instead, trinamiX says Apple later modified Face ID to incorporate technology that can determine properties of the material presented to the camera, including whether a detected face consists of human skin. According to the complaint, the allegedly infringing technology is now used in a variety of iPhone 15, iPhone 16 and iPhone 17 models, iPad Pro devices and other Apple products. trinamiX alleges Apple “knew or should have known” that updating its devices to use Face ID with material and skin detection would infringe its patents. The technology is intended to address presentation attacks against facial authentication systems. A photograph can potentially be rejected by determining that the presented face lacks three-dimensional depth. More sophisticated attacks can use three-dimensional masks or replicas that reproduce the geometry of a real face. trinamiX’s technology goes a step further by analyzing how projected light is reflected from an object. Those reflections can provide information not only about an object’s distance and shape, but also about properties