Walk the independent claim. Samsung Display's grant US12096677B2, "Display device with fingerprint recognition" (issued September 17, 2024; inventors Beong Hun Beon and Woo Suk Jung), is a granted patent. Its CPC anchor H10K 59/65 — OLED panels with integrated sensing — plus G06V 40/1318 fingerprint and OLED-structure classes, marks panel-integrated biometric art.
The element that does the work is in-panel integration. Rather than placing a discrete sensor beneath the screen, this claim builds the fingerprint-recognition capability into the OLED stack — H10K 59/65 is specifically the class for displays with sensing integrated into the panel. The defensible work is making the display structure itself perform the sensing.
What it reads on is the full-screen OLED phone with under-display fingerprint authentication, where the panel and sensor are increasingly the same component. As the dominant OLED supplier, Samsung Display has the incentive to own the panel-integrated sensing IP rather than cede it to discrete-sensor vendors, and this grant is that incentive realized.
This grant is the 2024 descendant of the integration strategy visible in LG Display's 2020 cluster and Samsung Display's own earlier filings — the same thesis (make the panel sense) matured into the H10K 59/65 era. The continuity is the strategic signal: display makers have spent years claiming the sensing function inside the panel.
Scope discipline: the claim protects the recited fingerprint-recognition display structure, not under-display sensing generally. A phone using a discrete optical module beneath a conventional panel may operate outside it. The defensible element is the in-panel integration the claim recites.
Granted status makes US12096677B2 enforceable and current. For anyone sourcing an OLED panel with integrated fingerprint sensing, it is both prior art and a potential obstacle — and a marker of how thoroughly the dominant panel maker has claimed the sense-in-the-screen approach.