ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 31 -- United States Patent no. 12,512,959, issued on Dec. 30, was assigned to NEC Corp. (Tokyo).
"Optical encryption camera" was invented by Francesco Pittaluga (Los Angeles), Xiang Yu (Mountain View, Calif.) and Salman Khan (San Jose, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An optical encryption camera includes a sensor array and a filter positioned over the sensor array to receive light prior to the sensor array. The filter includes a multiplexing mask and a scaling mask in sequence. The multiplexing mask and the scaling mask combine to provide an encryption key to encrypt image data prior to capture."
The patent was filed on Oct. 31, 2023, under Application No. 18/498,...