Apple has won a court victory in a battle against patent troll Identity Security LLC, with a jury deciding that Secure Enclave, used originally to enable Touch ID, did not violate four patents.
Touch ID and Face ID, which both rely on the Secure Enclave, shown off on iPhones.
Touch ID and Face ID, which both rely on the Secure Enclave, shown off on iPhones.
The Secure Enclave is described by Apple as a coprocessor built into the company’s system-on-chip (SoC) designs. The component requires its own boot sequence and software update mechanism, and is responsible for “all cryptographic operations for Data Protection key management and maintains the integrity of Data Protection even if the kernel has been compromised,” according to the company.
Identity Security LLC sued Apple in 2021 — eight years after the debut of the Secure Enclave. In the suit, the company claimed Apple’s Secure Enclave tech violated US Patents 7,493,497, 8,020,008, 8,489,895, and 9,507,948. All four deal with methods of improving user security by creating a digital identity that resides on a unique microprocessor device.