USPTO Honors 6 More IBM Blockchain Technology Patents in Just 1 Week

Multinational tech firm, the International Business Machines (IBM) has been continuously working towards coming up with innovative, blockchain-based projects on the distributed ledger. According to Cryptovest’s reporting, IBM was successful in gaining the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)’s attention, as the tech firm was granted 6 patents within a week’s time.

6 IBM Patents Awarded By USPTO

To better understand what the patents represent and why IBM was considered an appropriate recipient, here is a breakdown of each type:

1. “A product made specifically to increase privacy, while providing validation mechanisms for smart contracts within the DLT”

This patent was supposedly granted on July 12, 2018, but the decision was finalized four months prior to said date. Furthermore, IBM scored this award for its creation that made validating several blockchain transactions efficient and private. Most importantly, the creation helped to make the auditing process possible and at ease.

2. “The creation of a private blockchain”

As the name of the patent implies, IBM was awarded with this patent for its efficient private blockchain, which to the USPTO is superior to the likes of public and global blockchains. IBM believes that the latter two are “slow, large and expensive”, hence forcing them to offer a private blockchain as a potential solution.

3. “Cutting blockchain size down to maximize performance”

Due to the fact that every inch of detail regarding transactions are typically recorded, the information that gets fed into the blockchain becomes large in size, which might prolong the entire process. IBM’s creation of an alleged “system” was what helped to increase speed of the distributed ledger’s overall functioning. Ultimately, the system helps to diminish the size of blocks, which in turn reacts in the opposite, but positive direction.

4. “Promoting boosted trackability of assets within blockchain”

This respective patent was awarded for IBM’s efforts that made tracking assets within blockchain proficient. In particular, the creation helped to identify each item, which carries a specific “serial number” each. According to IBM, “the serial number may naturally be a key identifier used in the ledger”. The award was planned for over a year now!

5. “Rewarding programmer contribution”

Like the previous patent, this one was also filed sometime in January 5, 2017 by IBM. The creation was done solely to reward programmer’s contributions. The system in place will accurately assess the efforts of programmers and to what extent they’ve done so – this includes in terms of “volume of work, and contribution with high precision”.

6. “Helping medical workers track supplies inventory”

IBM did not only stop at enhancing current issues within blockchain technology, but also placed importance on an industry that still works with expensive measures – medical field. In particular, the tech firm was granted a patent that works towards using blockchain tech to track essential tools utilized by health professionals. This is definitely a praiseworthy attempt as keeping an inventory check is necessary to assess the amount of resources remaining along with how many people can benefit from them.