U.S. Patent 10728046 was awarded to Alibaba Group Holding Limited on July 28, 2020 and is entitled “Managing blockchain-based centralized ledger systems.” The first named inventor is Yuan Zhang of Shanghai, . The abstract contains an overview of the patent disclosure:

Disclosed herein are methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for managing blockchain-based centralized ledger systems. One of the methods includes: transmitting a timestamp request for a to-be-timestamped block in a blockchain to a trust time server by a ledger server in a centralized ledger system that stores data in the blockchain, the trust time server being associated with a trust time authority and independent from the centralized ledger system, the blockchain including a plurality of blocks storing transaction data, receiving a timestamp and associated signature for the to-be-timestamped block from the trust time server by the ledger server, and storing information of the timestamp and the associated signature for the to-be-timestamped block in the blockchain by the ledger server. Link to Full Patent

This blockchain patent was originally filed on December 13, 2019  as U.S. Patent Application 16/713966 at the United Stated Patent and Trademark Office. The application was them awarded a patent grant and published as U.S. Patent 10728046. The primary examiner was Shawnchoy Rahman.

Alibaba Group Holding Limited, who is the original assignee of this patent, has at least 1834 total granted patents in the United States as of the date of this article. This blockchain patent has been cited 1 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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