Recognizing unique EEG brainwaves to enhance biometric authentication: Key Neurotech Patent #20

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– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 6,898,299

Today we are shar­ing a robust 2005 patent har­ness­ing EEG brain­waves in the (now) hot space of bio­met­ric authen­ti­ca­tion and secu­ri­ty. (As men­tioned, we are fea­tur­ing a foun­da­tion­al Per­va­sive Neu­rotech patent a day, from old­er to new­er by issue date)

U.S. Patent No. 6,898,299: Method and sys­tem for bio­met­ric recog­ni­tion based on elec­tric and/or mag­net­ic characteristics.

  • Assignee(s): GR Intel­lec­tu­al Reserve, LLC
  • Inventor(s): Juliana H. Brooks
  • Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: EEG
  • Issue Date: May 24, 2005

SharpBrains’ Take:

The ‘299 patent applies EEG sig­nals, along with a num­ber of oth­er bio­met­ric sig­nals, to a wide array of authen­ti­ca­tion and secu­ri­ty appli­ca­tions. Dis­closed embod­i­ments range from authen­ti­cat­ed access of a locked device (e.g., phys­i­cal door locks, com­put­er access, etc.) to secure telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tem to con­duct­ing finan­cial trans­ac­tions. The spec­i­fi­ca­tion cov­ers an expan­sive 141 ill­lus­tra­tion sheets and over 30 pages of writ­ten mate­r­i­al in the spec­i­fi­ca­tion. The robust spec­i­fi­ca­tion, along with a pri­or­i­ty date extend­ing back to 1998, make the ‘299 patent a valu­able intel­lec­tu­al asset for pro­tect­ing prod­ucts and ser­vices involv­ing bio­met­ric authen­ti­ca­tion and are amongst the fac­tors that make the ‘299 patent a key non-inva­sive neu­rotech­nol­o­gy patent.

Abstract:

A method and appa­ra­tus for authen­ti­cat­ing an indi­vid­ual liv­ing organ­ism by rec­og­niz­ing a unique inter­nal elec­tric and/or mag­net­ic and/or acoustic char­ac­ter­is­tic, which com­pris­es a bio­met­ric sig­na­ture, involve pre­sent­ing a body part to a sens­ing device that sens­es the sig­na­ture. The sensed pre­sent­ed bio­met­ric sig­na­ture is com­pared to a known bio­met­ric sig­na­ture to authen­ti­cate the indi­vid­ual. This authen­ti­ca­tion can then be used to autho­rize any of a wide vari­ety of actions by the indi­vid­ual, such as access­ing equip­ment or an area, or to per­form actions, such as con­duct­ing finan­cial trans­ac­tions. A card hav­ing sen­sors is used to sense the bio­met­ric sig­na­ture which is read by a card read­er and sent to a local or remote read­er for bio­met­ric sig­na­ture comparison.

Illus­tra­tive Claim 41. A method of autho­riz­ing an action by a spe­cif­ic indi­vid­ual, com­pris­ing the steps of

  • mea­sur­ing unique, inter­nal elec­tric or mag­net­ic or acoustic prop­er­ties of a plu­ral­i­ty of dif­fer­ent body parts of said spe­cif­ic individual,
  • cal­cu­lat­ing a ratio of said mea­sure­ments to gen­er­ate a present bio­met­ric signature,
  • pro­vid­ing a data­base con­tain­ing known bio­met­ric sig­na­tures rep­re­sent­ing a class of individuals,
  • com­par­ing the present bio­met­ric sig­na­ture and the known bio­met­ric sig­na­tures in said data­base to deter­mine if said indi­vid­ual is a mem­ber of said class of indi­vid­u­als, and
  • autho­riz­ing the action by said spe­cif­ic indi­vid­ual when iden­ti­fied as a mem­ber of said class.

To learn more about mar­ket data, trends and lead­ing com­pa­nies in the dig­i­tal brain health space –dig­i­tal plat­forms for brain/ cog­ni­tive assess­ment, mon­i­tor­ing and enhance­ment– check out this mar­ket report. To learn more about our analy­sis of 10,000+ patent fil­ings, check out this IP & inno­va­tion neu­rotech report.