Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com has applied for over 200 blockchain patents, according to a report by Securities Daily News on May 20. The report also notes that major e-commerce competitor Alibaba has applied for 262 blockchain patents, and Chinese internet titans Tencent and Baidu have applied for 80 and 50 such patents, respectively, as recorded by the Intellectual Property Center of China Information and Communication. According to interpretation of the data provided by Intellectual Property Center of China Information and Communication, JD.com was in first place for “global blockchain patent strength,” with Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu coming it at second, …

Social media giant Facebook acquired the rights to the “Libra” trademark for its secretive cryptocurrency project, crypto news website The Block reported on May 3. The Block claims that a source familiar with the matter confirmed that Facebook is recruiting financial firms to develop its own crypto and that the project’s codename and product name is Libra. Moreover, documents released by the United States Patent and Trademark Office and filed in June 2018 reveal that the company has evidently acquired the rights to the “Libra” trademark. More precisely, while the owner of the filing is a limited liability company that …

Tech giant IBM has been awarded a patent for a mobile data sharing method that uses distributed ledger technology (DLT), according to documents published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on April 23. The product described in the filing represents a continuation of U.S. patent application filed in November 2017 entitled “Information Sharing Among Mobile Apparatus.” IBM proposes a method executed by a mobile apparatus to verify information that has been shared between two devices. In detail, the platform can collect specific information and deliver it to nearby computing nodes, with subsequent publishing of a verified incident …

Documents published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on April 16 reveal that Texas-based cybersecurity company Forcepoint has been awarded a blockchain-related patent. Forcepoint is owned by U.S. defense contractor Raytheon and private equity firm Vista Equity Partners, and Crunchbase estimates its yearly revenue to be $600 million. The system described in the patent appears to be a complex user behavior monitoring and management system. The system would aim to store data about electronically-observable user interactions and then use this data to identify known good, anomalous and malevolent user actions to enhance the system’s cybersecurity. Some versions …

Digital payments giant PayPal has won a cybersecurity patent to protect users from crypto ransomware, according to a document from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published on April 16. The system described in the patent, entitled “Techniques for ransomware detection and mitigation,” intends to improve the detection of ransomware and prevent it from locking up users’ access to their files. PayPal’s patent describes ransomware as a malware that may encrypt original data and delete the non-encrypted original version, with the malicious party usually demanding users to pay them in anonymous cryptocurrency in order to decrypt the files. …

Charles Hoskinson, the co-founder of Ethereum (ETH) and IOHK, the company behind Cardano (ADA), has criticized Ethereum and EOS’s approach to development. Hoskinson made his comments during an interview with business news outlet Fortune published on April 9. During the interview, Hoskinson noted that most protocols publish all their code open source and free from patents, explaining that ideas which Cardano or most other crypto development teams come up with can be used by other teams. This, he claims, is different from EOS’s approach and the way in which Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithm Casper is being developed: “This is a …

Global consulting company Accenture has patented two solutions focused on blockchain interoperability, according to the data published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on April 2. The first patent, filed August 2018, patents a method for cryptologic blockchain interoperability. As described in the technical section of the patent, participants can share the token data stored on a distributed ledger (DLT) network by using a digital signature within the solution. The document also mentions the ability to send a multi-signature certification message to a recipient who solicits information. According to the patent, the receiver can then verify the …

Multinational computing giant IBM is adding to its arsenal of blockchain patents with a new implementation to manage data and interactions for self-driving vehicles (SDVs). The patent was published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on April 2. IBM — which has, according to the documents, previously filed extensive patents for various inventions related to autonomous cars — outlines that a blockchain system could effectively enhance SDV configurations by allowing for robust privacy and information validation. The context for prospective blockchain implementation would be a system wherein an SDV interacts and predicts the behavior of the drivers of …

Mainstream media corporation Thomson Reuters was awarded a patent for a blockchain-based identity management system, documents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office released on April 2 reveal. The patent, originally filed on Dec. 22, 2015, describes a system providing identity services capable of receiving an identity from an identity provider system alongside validated identity data, and then storing it on a blockchain in an identity token. Moreover, the patent also describes variations of this procedure wherein the transaction uses a smart contract, the identity data is hashed, or the access to the system used is restricted and requests authorization …

United States bank holding corporation Capital One has won its latest blockchain-related patent, this time incorporating the technology in a content validation system. Documents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office released the patent on April 2. Capital One, which last year focused its intellectual property efforts on blockchain for user authentication, now wants to use it as part of a wider network involving content providers. “A device may receive first content data from a content provider, the first content data including data identifying content,” an extract from the patent’s summary reads. The summary continues: “The device may generate second …

Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist who has sometimes claimed to be Bitcoin (BTC) creator Satoshi Nakamoto, has reportedly applied for a slew of blockchain-related patents since 2017. Tech news site The Next Web (TNW) published its research regarding Wright’s patent filings on March 18. TNW reports that, since August 2017, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has published 155 patent applications filed by Wright. As with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the WIPO publishes patent applications to notify the public that there is a potential new technology in a certain industry or space. Wright will only receive …

Multinational computing giant IBM is adding to its arsenal of blockchain patents with an application for improving the security of permissioned blockchain networks. The patent, first filed in October 2016, was published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on March 12. The patent is entitled “Resisting replay attacks efficiently in a permissioned and privacy-preserving blockchain network,” and outlines security techniques for withstanding such attacks while maintaining valid user permissions and privacy. In its most general sense, a replay attack is a valid data transmission that is maliciously or fraudulently repeated or delayed. IBM’s background for its patent explains …