Financial services giant American Express (Amex) has filed a patent for a blockchain-based system to capture and transmit the image of a receipt, according to a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent filing published Nov. 13. The patent applicant is listed as American Express Travel Related Services Co., Inc., the company’s travel subsidiary. The new filing, titled “Linking digital images with related records,” includes a new method for receiving, recording and transmitting the image of a receipt. The filing describes how the system lets a user with a mobile device capture the image of a receipt. The system then, …

E-commerce giant Amazon has won two patents related to methods for protecting the integrity of digital signatures and improving distributed data storage. The two patents were published by by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today, Nov. 13. The first patent document, first filed in April of this year, outlines a “signature delegation” method for “protecting the integrity of digital signatures and encrypted communications,” by allowing for the generation, distribution, validation, and revocation of one-time-use cryptographic keys. In the proposed system, these keys are arranged in what is known in cryptography as a “Merkle Tree” structure, which is a …

U.S. multinational IT company IBM plans to use blockchain to aid scientific research and provide a record of its results, a new patent application filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office revealed Nov. 8. IBM, originally filing the concept in December last year, says it foresees “integrating a blockchain and data collection and analysis for open scientific research.” The application is the latest in a steadily increasing pile of patents sought by the corporation in the blockchain sector, the most recent award coming last week targeted at augmented reality gaming. Now, an altogether more technical offshoot addresses what it …

U.S. software company Salesforce has won a patent to detect spam emails using blockchain technology. The patent filing was published on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) website Tuesday, Nov. 4. Salesforce, which offer its customers is a cloud-based mailing platform, patented a solution that allows for the detection of whether an initial email was modified while being sent. In addition, the blockchain-driven program could help improve the existing filters that often fail to distinguish between spam and regular emails, such as promo letters. As explained in the technical part of the document, to assure the authenticity of the …

On October 30, Bank of America (BofA) added yet another cryptocurrency-related patent to its collection of more than 50 applications filed within the same field. The second-largest bank in the US has been leading in the informal blockchain patent race, sidestepping such players as IBM and Alibaba. However, that does not mean that BofA is being bullish — the company has been publicly criticizing cryptocurrencies, relying on patents mostly to appear progressive in the fintech community. Brief history of BofA’s filing crypto-related patents The bank filed its first blockchain-related patent back in March 2014, and it was published by the …

Major global tech giant IBM has applied for another blockchain patent, this time aiming to deter augmented reality (AR) game players from intruding on undesirable locations. The tech firm’s latest patent document was released by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on Thursday, Nov. 1. In the patent, IBM, also known as Big Blue, describes a blockchain-based method and system of interactions between a AR-running mobile device and locational database in order to set and maintain safe boundaries between AR objects and real-world physical locations. According to the document, a distributed ledger is set to continuously maintain a growing …

U.S. multinational financial services corporation Mastercard wants to apply principles of fractional reserve banking to cryptocurrency, a new patent application published Thursday, Oct. 25 reveals. According to the document, published by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO), the payment processor has plans to allow merchants to interact with what it calls “blockchain currencies” via a new method of simultaneous crypto and fiat storage. Specifically, reference is made to “methods for managing fractional reserves of blockchain currency.” Mastercard has offered a mixed public stance on cryptocurrency in recent years, this month winning a further blockchain-related patent, while signalling along with …

A Russian intellectual property startup has signed a memorandum with officials from Uzbek capital Tashkent to integrate blockchain for use in copyright, Russian state news agency TASS reports Tuesday, Oct. 16. The president of the Russian National Intellectual Property Transactions Coordination Center (IPChain), Andrey Krichevsky, met the head of Tashkent's department of innovations Jasur Zakhidov during the Open Innovations Forum in Moscow. Both parties agreed to implement decentralized solutions to protect copyrights in different areas, such as intellectual property and patent records. Zakhidov further explained that blockchain could help develop the whole copyright sphere and make it profitable, noting that …

Leading South Korean financial holding company KB Financial Group Inc. has been awarded a patent for a blockchain-based fintech app security solution, South Korean economic news outlets The Digital Times reports Monday, Oct. 15. KB Financial is reported to have over $342 billion in assets under management and presides over multiple overseas and domestic subsidiaries, among them KB Kookmin Bank, the country’s largest bank and also the 60th largest bank globally as of 2017. KB’s new patent focuses on a blockchain-based solution to improve an “essential” security program for fintech applications. The newly patented technology reportedly separates this security program …

On October 9, American financial services giant Mastercard was granted a patent for a method to partition a blockchain so that it can store multiple transaction types and formats. The filing published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) reveals the details of the new system — not the first of the kind for Mastercard. Why would you need to partition a blockchain? Simply put, different blockchains store their transactions in different blocks — say, Bitcoin (BTC) uses one kind of system to record data on its blockchain, while Ethereum (ETH) opts for alternative metrics. Now, imagine a company …

Mastercard has been awarded a patent for a method to partition a blockchain, making it capable of storing multiple transaction types and formats. The patent filing was published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on Oct. 9. The document explains that in current blockchain systems, the transaction records stored in the different blocks that comprise a blockchain are “often required to be of the same format and include the same types, and sometimes even sizes, of data.” This means that any entity that wants to use multiple types of blockchains — whether ones that support different cryptocurrencies, or …

Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba has filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for a blockchain-based system that allows a third-party administrator to intervene in a smart contract in case of illegal activities. The USPTO published the patent application on Oct. 4. A smart contract is a computer protocol designed to digitally verify or enforce the negotiation or performance of a contract. Smart contracts are self-executing, with the terms of the agreement between the parties being directly written into lines of code. The patent document, which was initially filed in March, describes a blockchain-powered transaction method …