The surge in the number of patent applications has come with the speed and accuracy of face and iris recognition having greatly improved. (image: Korean Intellectual Property Office)
DAEJEON, Dec. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — The number of patent applications for non-contact biometric authentication technology based on human characteristics such as the face, iris and voice has surged in recent days.
According to the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the number of patent applications for non-contact biometric authentication technologies jumped to 792 in 2019, up 83.7 percent from 431 in 2015.
The surge in the number of patent applications has come with the speed and accuracy of face and iris recognition having greatly improved on the back of the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data processing technology.
The overall number of patent applications for biometric authentication technology encompassing both contact and non-contact technology stood at 1,295 in 2019, up 25.6 percent from 1,031 in 2015.
The number of patent applications for contact-type biometric authentication technology slid by 16.2 percent to 503 in 2019 from 600 in 2015, while the number of applications for non-contact biometric authentication technology has been on an upward trend for the past few years.
Looking over the nationality of the patent applicants in the area of non-contact biometric authentication technology over the past five years starting from 2015, Koreans accounted for 74.1 percent of total 2,128 patent applications, followed by Americans at 11.5 percent, Chinese at 4.1 percent and Japanese at 1.8 percent.
J. S. Shin (js_shin@koreabizwire.com)
