The core theoretical idea in Daugman's algorithms is that the failure of a test of statistical independence can be a very strong basis for pattern recognition, if there is sufficiently high entropy (enough degrees-of-freedom of random variation) among samples from different classes. In 1994 he patented this basis for iris recognition and its underlying computer vision algorithms for image processing, feature extraction, and matching, and published them in a paper. These algorithms became widely licensed through a series of companies: IriScan (a start-up founded by Flom, Safir, and Daugman), Iridian, Sarnoff, Sensar, LG-Iris, Panasonic, Oki, BI2, IrisGuard, Unisys, Sagem, Enschede, Securimetrics and L-1, now owned by French company Morpho.