Prior patents in finger print systems

TERM PAPER

IIT Delhi

Management of Intellectual Property Rights

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MUKTESH CHANDER IPS

2006 SMZ 8216

Prior Patents in Finger Print Systems

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DACTYLOGRAPHY The Science of Fingerprints is also called

Dactylography

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- William Herschel (1833-1918)

• Working as the Assistant Joint Magistrate and Collector in colonial India, Herschel is credited with being the first European to recognize the value of fingerprints for identification purposes.

• In 1859 he began collecting, as keepsakes, the fingerprints of his friends and relatives and took note of how each impression was unique to the individual and observed that the patterns did not change over time.

PIONEERS

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1858 CONTRACT

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Sir Edward Henry (1850 - 1931)

• As the Inspector General of Police for Bengal Province in India, he set out to solve the problem of fingerprint classification.

• Henry went back to India and assigned two Bengali police officers to study the classification problem.

• Hemchandra Bose,(1897) Aka Rai Bahadur Hemchandra Bose was one of the Indian Police Officers in Bengal who worked for Sir Edward Richard .

• Haque, Azizul (1800's)Aka Khan Bahadur Azizul Huq wasthe other Indian Police Officers in Bengal who worked for Sir Edward Richard Henry and helped him develop the Henry System of Classification.

• Haque devised a mathematical formula to supplement Henry's idea of sorting slips in 1024 pigeon holes, based on fingerprint patterns.

• Henry's team in India was successful in setting up a classification system called Henry System of Classification which was officially adopted by British India in 1897.

The first “Finger Print Bureau” in the world was officially established in Kolkatka on 12 june 1897 at Writers’ Building.

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Fingerprint Detector and Developer

Patent No. 1540680

Date of filing December 23, 1923

Date of patent issued

June 2, 1925

Patentee Arthur E. Bergouist of Lindstrom Minnesota

Description :

The receptacle formed by the casing 1 is supplied with a sufficient quantity of chemicals adapted to adhere to the lines of a finger print and hence bring the said lines out for identification purposes. The face of the device is then placed over the finger print and the crank 12 is turned whereupon the chemicals will be picked up by the cross slats 10 as said slats pass over the large pulleys, and thereafter the chemicals will be thrown by the cross slats against the surface bearing the finger print with the result indicated. Manifestly some of the chemicals will adhere to the lines of the finger print and the excess chemicals will fall and be caught in the receptacle afforded by the casing

PRIOR PATENTS

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Latent Print Lifting MeansPatent No. 1937575

Date of filing November 19, 1928


December 5, 1933

Patentee Richard M. Joyee, St. Louis

Description:

The device consists of a flexible material, such as a fabric E, having an even coating of a finely textured, gum-like substance F, by which the print is lifted, and upon which it is recorded and preserved. While there are a number of materials suitable for this purpose, crepe rubber, rendered plastic by treatment with a suitable rubber softener, and intermixed in suitable pro-portions with guayule, cottonseed oil, carbon black, and pine tar, has been found to produce a compound having the desired qualities. The surface is provided with a covering, preferably of transparent material. Clear celluloid has been found to be a suitable material. To lift a latent print from an object, the impression first is lightly dusted with a suitable powdered pigment, for example, aluminum powder. It provide a contrasting image against the darker field of the rubber lifting and preserving medium.

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Method of Obtaining Fingerprints

Patent No. 2028619

Date of filing March 14, 1935


Patentee J. MeCarthy, Boston, Mass

Description:

It is a new finger print powder preferably consisting of hydroquinone and acacia ground together by mixing eight parts hydroquinone and one part acacia by weight. A sensitized sheet such as photographic film or sensitized paper is used for taking the finger print impression, first wetting it in an alkaline solution preferably consisting of sodium hydroxide, sodium sulphite and sufficient water. The sensitized sheet is soaked in this solution for one or two minutes and excess moisture is then removed from it before taking the impression. Finger print is sprinkled with the powder and finger print lines are then brushed out carefully in accordance with the present practice soaked in an alkaline solution for one or two minutes, which solution may consist of sodium hydroxide, sodium sulphite and water, as previously described. The sensitized sheet is placed face down on the finger print and pressed down to eliminate any air bubbles.

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Fingerprint MachinePatent No. 2153684

Date of filing July 23, 1937


April 11, 1939

Patentee Harold L. Ballard, Syracuse

Description:

This invention relates to fingerprint machines for use in conjunction with the identification cards. It is a simple and efficient device by the use of which the fingers can be linked and the cards held in a plurality of positions for taking the different impressions without harming the card or blurring the impressions.

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Fingerprint Card or Sheet HolderPatent No. 2254530

Date of filing October 2, 1940


Sept. 2, 1941

Patentee Edward Kessick

Description:

This invention relates to new and useful improvements in a fingerprint card or sheet holder. The purpose of having the flat downwardly and rearwardly extending rear portion of the support strip is that the four fingers of each hand may be conveniently rested or rolled thereon to obtain good plain or rolled fingerprints. The support strip may be tilted to various positions so that its flat downwardly extending rear portion may assume various inclinations.

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Finger PrintingPatent No. 2313807

Date of filing February 3, 1941


March 16, 1943

Patentee G.P. Churry

Description:

Prior to the present invention, it has been very difficult to make finger prints of a deceased person and often the prints obtained have been unsatisfactory. In the present system the end portion of the finger is coated with a solution of a plastic composition capable of drying or solidifying by mere exposure to air. By exposing the coating to the surrounding air for a short period of time, a solid flexible coat is produced having accurately molded in its inner surface an impression representation of the marking upon the finger. The coat then is removed from the finger and turned inside out so that the impression of the markings on the finger now is located in the outer surface of the coat. The solution of plastic composition used in the preferred practice of the invention is a colloidal solution of rubber or latex in a volatile solvent containing sufficient ammonia to prevent coagulation of a latex when not directly exposed to the air but insufficient to prevent coagulation when a thin film of the solution is exposed to the air.:

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Fingerprint Powder and Method of Application

Patent No. 4176205

Date of filing March 24, 1976


November 27, 1979

Patentee Orlando G. Malina

Assignee Rockwell International Corporation, EI Segundo, Calif

Description:

Fingerprint powder and method for developing latent fingerprints therewith, such powder comprised of a powder carrier, especially a mixtue of silica and talc, containing a coloring agent, preferably a fluorescent dye such as Morton Fluorescent Yellow. The fingerprint powder can be applied by blowing the powder over a surface containing latent fingerprints, or by brushing or pouring the powder on such surface, or by immersion thereof in such powder, thus developing and revealing a bright, sharp fingerprint, which can be photographed or lifted by applying tape or a strippable coating over the print.

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Pattern Recognition SystemPatent No. 4525859

Date of filing September 3, 1982


June 25, 1985

Patentee Romald E. Bowles, David E. Bowles

Description:

A pattern recognition system which detects line bifurcations and line endings, denoted minutiae, in a pattern of lines such as are found in a fingerprint is disclosed. In one embodiment, an image of a pattern is focused on a conventional matrix of image sensors or pixels. An interface circuit serially reads the voltages from the pixels and applies them to an automatic, programmable threshold detector which optimally selects a cutoff voltage and outputs a binary signal representative of the presence of a point to a minutiae detection circuit. One part of this circuit electrically reforms the matrix on a first-in-first out basis and simultaneously forms a smaller submatrix or window. Another part of the detection circuit determines firstly if a point is present in the central array of the window, and if so, secondly whether no more than two points, which are also contiguous, are present in the peripheral part of the submatrix. In such a case, a minutia has been located and a memory stores the address of the window.

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Image EnhancerPatent No. 4832485

Date of filing September 3, 1982


May 23, 1989

Patentee Romald E. Bowles

Assignee Commonwealth Technology, Inc., Alexandria, Va.

Description:An image enhancer for providing a sharp, contrasting image of a pattern, such as a fingerprint pattern is disclosed. In one embodiment, an image enhancer is comprised of a viscous, opaque liquid interposed between an optical glass window and a reflective electrometric membrane. Artificial lighting is evenly focused on the underside of the membrane and a sharp fingerprint image of a finger pressing said membrane against the window is produced. The image can be either photographed or focused on a conventional matrix of image sensors or pixels.

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Automatic Fingerprint Identification System including Processes and Apparatus for Matching

Fingerprints

Patent No. 4790564

Date of filing February 20, 1987


December 13, 1988

Patentee Philippe Larcher, Francois Irigoin- Guchandut, Daniel Vassy, Michel Lenci, Patrick Longepierre, Bernard Didier

Assignee Morpho Systems, Avon, France

Description:

The invention is an automatic method and related apparatus for identifying fingerprints by means of comparing the minutiae of each fingerprint in a data base of fingerprints with selected ones of pre computed vector images order to determine the existence or not of a fit between the minutiae of a file print and the pre-selected search minutiae images, in position and angle.

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Automatic Fingerprint Classification/ Identification System and Method

Patent No. 5465303

Date of filing November 12, 1993


November 7, 1995

Patentee Laurence L. Levison, Paul B. Goldberg, Scott D. Stanek

Assignee Aeroflex Systems Corporation, Plainview, N.Y.

Description:An automated fingerprint classification and identification system used to determine or verify the identity of an unknown person by comparing one or more of the person’s fingerprints (I.e., the unknown fingerprints) to known fingerprints stored in a database. The components of the present invention include: (1) an apparatus and method for automatically classifying and storing the fingerprints in the database according to a lesser known manual 10 fingerprint classification method (the Vucetich classification and sub classification method), and (2) an apparatus and method for limiting the search of the database to only those fingerprints that are of the same classification as the unknown fingerprint(s). By endowing the standard automatic fingerprint identification systems with automated fingerprint classification and storage features of the present invention, the present invention reduces the amount of time required for an automated fingerprint identification system’s “matcher” (the processing unit that searches the database) to complete a database search, thus increasing the speed of the system and/or reducing the number of matches required to obtain a desired processing speed. In practical terms, the effect of the present invention is to lower the cost of the equipment required to perform automated fingerprint searches while preserving the accuracy of state-of-the-art systems.

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Fingerprint Identification SystemPatent No. 5799098

Date of filing April 3, 1997


August 25, 1998

Patentee James R. Ort, Douglas L. Lange, Frederick W. Kiefer, Raymond J. Dennison

Assignee Calspan Corporation, Buffalo, N.Y.

Description:

In this method for comparing one fingerprint to another, there is recorded for each fingerprint the location and angle of minutiae along with a quality measure of each minutiae, and the core and delta location along with the local average image. As image state map defining high quality image areas with and without minutiae and areas of low image quality is also recorded. In matching fingerprints, ridge angle maps are used to align fingerprint images, then state maps are compared followed by a comparison of minutiae locations. Fingerprints are scored according to closeness of march using a dual hypothesis technique where corresponding areas on file prints and candidate prints are provided with a positive score based when there is correspondence between good quality areas containing minutiae and good quality areas containing no minutiae, and a negative score is generated when minutiae are present in a good quality area in one fingerprint and where no minutiae are present in the corresponding good quality area in the other fingerprint.

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Hand-Held Fingerprint Recognition and Transmission Device

Patent No. 6111977



August 29, 2000

Patentee Walter Guy Scott, James E. Davis, Ellis Betensky

Assignee Cross Match Technologies, Inc.

Description:

A portable fingerprint recognition transmitter that is compact, being less than the size of a cigarette pack, allowing the fingerprint recognition transmitter to be carried by an individual in a pocket or purse. The fingerprint recognition transmitter operates to take the image of the fingerprint and formulates a fingerprint image capable of transmitting through infrared or radio frequency to a receiver having previously stored fingerprint images so as to cause a comparison between the image taken and the image stored for purposes of unlocking a security area.

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System and Method for Automatically Verifying Identity of a

SubjectPatent No. 5917928

Date of filing July 14, 1997


June 29, 1999

Patentee Mikhail Shpuntov, Alexandre Pletnev, Mikhail Berestetskiy

Assignee BES Systems, Inc., Brooklyn, N.Y.

Description:

The system employs a novel global image comparison approach by first acquiring a reference fingerprint image from a user during an enrollment stage, obtaining a set of multiple reference segments from the reference image representative of unique portions thereof, and later during a verification stage obtaining a verification fingerprint image from a user seeking access to the secured area of object, determining the most likely positions for the multiple reference segments over the verify image, and then comparing all pixels of the reference image enclosed by the multiple reference segments to all pixels in a portion of the verify image overlaid by the multiple reference segments in their current positions over the verify image in accordance with a dynamically determined threshold that is individually tailored for the user providing the reference image during the enrolled stage.

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Latent Fingerprint Lifting and Recordation Device

Patent No. 6494489

Date of filing May 24, 2001


December 17, 2002

Patentee John M. Massimo, Sr.

Assignee Pro-Lift Fingerprint Collection System, Inc., Bradenton, FL(US)

Description:

A latent fingerprint lifting and recordation device of the type which provides a permanent and official fingerprint document. The device includes a flexible transparent latent fingerprint lifting sheet having one adhesive surface and a flat opaque somewhat thicker, less flexible sheet defining a perimeter frame and a removable central area which defines a protective cover, the perimeter frame being substantially similar in size and shape to that of, and adhered in generally coextensive fashion on one surface thereof against the adhesive side of the fingerprint lifting sheet. When the transparent fingerprint lifting sheet, with the perimeter frame adhesively attached thereto, is separated from the protective cover, an imaged latent fingerprint may be lifted and recorded on the adhesive surface. The latent fingerprint thereafter is protectively sandwiched for viewing through the transparent sheet when the protective cover is adhesively reattached to the adhesive surface to form a permanent fingerprint document.

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Method and System for Quality based Fingerprint System

Patent No. 6973206



December 6, 2005

Patentee Peter Lo

Assignee Motorola, Inc. Schaumburg, IL(US)

Description:

A method including the steps of receiving (202) a search record; generating (206) at least one hierarchical cluster, each having a difference minimum quality level; for each cluster, generating (210) at least one corresponding search package having a first set of search prints; selecting the highest quality cluster (218), a search package (222) and corresponding the records for performing a search (226); determining (230) whether a hit was found between any file print in the corresponding file records and any search print in the selected search package; and proceeding with the search process through the remaining quality clusters in an order based on decreasing quality until a match is found or until there are no remaining file records against which to compare a search package.

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