Major American cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has been awarded a patent for a system that identifies and flags non-compliant accounts. A filing with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on Nov. 19 details a system containing a scoring model that “determines a compliance score for each one of the accounts based on the respective factors associated with the respective account.” The system then compares the compliance score for each account to detect those accounts that fail compliance standards. Eliminating non-compliant accounts After a flagging unit identifies purportedly non-compliant accounts, the system assesses whether they are good or bad, enters the …

Measured by patent applications in the sector, China is handily outpacing other countries including the United States in blockchain technology. On Nov. 20, Japan-based financial newspaper Nikkei reported that Chinese companies submitted around 7,600 applications between 2009 and 2018 — about three times as many as U.S.-based companies. A total of 12,000 blockchain applications According to Tokyo-based research firm Astamuse, the U.S., China, Japan, South Korea and Germany together submitted around 12,000 blockchain-related patent applications through 2018, with China accounting for over 60% of the five-country total. South Korea submitted close to 1,150 applications within the same time frame, while …

Leading communications and technology company Verizon has been awarded a patent for using virtual subscriber identity modules (vSIMs) for customers’ devices. A filing with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on Sept. 10 details a blockchain encryption technology, wherein a traditional physical SIM card can be replaced with a software SIM version. According to the filing, this ensures more security and the existence of only one copy of the vSIM on one device at a time. The document further explains: “The network device initiates creation of a blockchain including a vSIM certificate for the network services, wherein the vSIM …

South Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung has filed a patent for a blockchain-enabled solid state drive (SSD). Improving speed and life span Local industry news outlet Decenter reported on Sept. 3 that Samsung applied for the “programmable blockchain solid state drive and switch” patent on Jan. 15, and that it was published on Feb. 2. Details of the newly designed system are sparse, but it will reportedly be used to improve the speed and life span of blockchain-aware storage devices. To achieve this, Samsung intends to use Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). FPGAs are devices which can be placed in …

Chinese online retail giant Alibaba has applied for a United States patent entitled “Domain Name Management Scheme for Cross-Chain Interactions in Blockchain Systems.” Alibaba filed its latest application on Aug. 15 in a continuation of an application filed in November 2018. According to the filing, Alibaba intends to patent a system that uses what they call a “unified blockchain domain name” (UBCDN) in order to denote and share information. In the system, Alibaba proposes to use a computing system to generate a UBCDN message which contains a blockchain domain name and a chain identifier that is paired with that name. …

Blockchain startup tZERO, announced that it has been awarded a patent for a technology allowing to anchor traditional trades and exchanges to public blockchains. A blockchain integration for exchanges The company announced the development in a press release published on Aug. 6. The patent reportedly describes an integration by the Time Ordered Merkle Epoch (TOME) methodology. The release’s author explains TOME as “a base-layer technology that uses digital signatures to record and verify time-series data such as trades, executions and settlements.” An auditable record of trades Per the release, the newly patented system enables low-latency applications, including traditional matching engines …

Two American inventors have won a patent for a blockchain-based recording system for ballistic data. The United States Patent and Trademark Office awarded two inventors — Jason Palazzolo and Kevin Barnes — a patent for a “firearm environmental recording apparatus and system” on July 23. This apparently could include multiple recording devices, including a camera, microphone, and spatial sensor module that can record velocity, spatial measurements and acceleration data. The filing states that a blockchain database or network could be used to store or be associated with any of the data gathered by the mechanisms. Justifire and evidence for self-defense …

Earlier this week, Bank of America (BofA), one the United States’ largest financial institutions, made a massive splash in the crypto sphere as the details of its recently registered patent, entitled “Real-Time Net Settlement by Distributed Ledger System” and citing the Ripple blockchain, emerged in the press. Even though the extent and exact character of the proposed system’s reliance on Ripple is impossible to determine from the filing, the community of XRP holders and supporters rejoiced. A piquant nuance is that the XRP token itself was never mentioned in documentation, suggesting a curious “Ripple without XRP” scheme that the patent’s …

South Korea has the highest blockchain patent grant rate, according to London-based law firm Withers & Rogers. Meanwhile, Japan comes at a distant second, intellectual property business media platform IAM reports on July 23. Getting a blockchain patent in China takes a while Per the report, South Korea has the highest patent grant rate (54%), followed by Japan (17%), and the United States (16%), with China significantly lagging behind. The outlet suggests that a reason for this substantial disparity between China and the rest of the world is that a sizable portion of those patents outside China follow a procedure …

Bank of America has filed for a patent for a settlement system citing a ‘ripple’ distributed ledger, according to a filing on Google Patents. The patent in question — the application of which was published on June 6 — describes a system using distributed ledger technology (DLT) as an interbank communication tool. The proposed system would enable real-time settlement with transactions being communicated through a shared, decentralized ledger to which both the banks would have access. The decentralized network would both verify the identity of the payer and the payee and enable communication between the institutions. Notably, multiple illustrations included …

Tech giant IBM has tripled the number of blockchain patents secured in the United States since last year, currently boasting over 100 active patent families. That makes IBM’s growth in US patents the largest of last year, according to a report by crypto-related news site BeinCrypto on July 16. According to data gathered by Yuval Halevi, co-founder of crypto and blockchain PR company GuerillaBuzz, IBM’s number of active patent families dwarfs other notable corporations. This includes some primary tech companies, such as Intel, Microsoft, and Dell Technologies: “In just 1 year the number of IBM blockchain patents has grown by …

The number of global blockchain patent filings significantly outstrips the patent filings for other technologies, according to research by the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property (IPI) and London-based law firm Withers & Rogers. British media outlet Compelo reported the results on June 5. According to the report, the amount of blockchain patents in the world is far outpacing that of quantum computing, as the number of blockchain patent families has already exceeded that of quantum computing. The report says that the number of blockchain-related patent filings has grown tremendously since 2014, with the largest amount of those having been …