U.S. Patent 11010778 was awarded to Valassis Communications, Inc. on May 18, 2021 and is entitled “Blockchain data.” The first named inventor is Alexander J. Olson of San Carlos, CA. The abstract contains an overview of the patent disclosure:

A coupon-minter is configured to perform operations including: generating a coupon comprising encrypted discount information, wherein the encrypted discount information is encrypted with a discount key; generating, for the coupon, a hashlock from a preimage; introducing the coupon to a blockchain in association with the hashlock, wherein the blockchain is configured to permit claiming of the generated coupon only upon receiving access to the preimage used to generate the hashlock. A store-manager configured to perform operations including: claiming, using the preimage, the coupon in the blockchain; encrypting the discount key with a clearing-house public key; updating the coupon with the encrypted discount key. A clearing-house-manager configured to perform operations comprising: detecting the store-manager’s claiming of the coupon; decrypting the encrypted discount key with a clearing-house private key to re-generate the discount key; and decrypting the encrypted discount information with the preimage. Link to Full Patent

This blockchain patent was originally filed on March 06, 2017  as U.S. Patent Application 15/451158 at the United Stated Patent and Trademark Office. The application was them awarded a patent grant and published as U.S. Patent 11010778. The primary examiner was Thuy N Nguyen.

Valassis Communications, Inc., who is the original assignee of this patent, has at least 2 total granted patents in the United States as of the date of this article. This blockchain patent has been cited 0 times by other U.S. patents according to our law firm research, and can be considered an innovative patent in the field of cryptocurrency and blockchain.

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