Lockheed Martin Corp and NEC Corp will work together to share technologies and expertise as well as potential customers in the one to many fingerprint security market. The two say the market is expected to grow to between six and ten times its current size by the year 2000, and they believe they have complementary technologies to service the growth. One to many fingerprinting is where a fingerprint is compared against possibly a huge database of fingerprints for verification of identification, as opposed to a one-to-one system, for example for door-entry, where a person’s fingerprint is compared to a stored image for verification. One- to-many applications may be for national registry’s or law enforcement agencies. Lockheed is currently developing a system for the US Federal Bureau of Investigation which involves storage and retrieval of more than 40 million fingerprint templates. The companies are still discussing exactly how they will work together, and whether they will undertake any joint development in the future.
