SecuGen Corporation announced that the Chinese Patent Office, under the State Intellectual Property Office, has granted SecuGen a patent for its key fingerprint recognition sensor hardware patent.

The patent has been granted to SecuGen Corporation as the sole assignee for a period of twenty years.

The patent entitled, "Method and Apparatus for Reduction of Trapezoidal Distortion and Improvement of Image Sharpness in an Optical Image Capturing System" covers the optic technology used in all SecuGen sensors.

"We are pleased to have been granted this patent after having established our products throughout the world as a leading provider in this emerging technology-based industry," said Won Lee, president and CEO of SecuGen.

Fingerprint recognition embedded in computer hardware are starting to become popular in China. IBM is currently selling its Thinkpad T42 with fingerprint recognition embedded next to the keyboard.