The iPhone is notorious for picking up fingerprints like the FBI at a homicide scene. Now, they might finally be put to good use. Apple has filed a patent (We know, today is patent day), exposed by AppleInsider, that shows fingerprint signatures being used to trigger certain events.

Instead of relying on gestures to evoke certain actions, like skipping ahead in a playlist, a fingerprint sensor could trigger the same thing when touched by a certain person in a certain place. Potentially, this could open the door for user identification technology similar to the fingerprint sensors on PCs that we have all made fun of at some point (and remapped to our own fingers), that allow you to bypass password entry with a swipe of your finger.

That said, Apple could still give all of us the finger (pun intended) and omit any such technology from future product releases. With the number of patents they file, one can only imagine engineers do most of them just for funsies.