U.S. Patent 11206272 was awarded to Endress+Hauser Process Solutions AG on December 21, 2021 and is entitled “System and method for determining or monitoring a process variable in an automation plant.” The first named inventor is Michael Mayer of Oberwil, . The abstract contains an overview of the patent disclosure:

The present disclosure relates to a system and method for determining or monitoring a process variable having a higher-level unit and a plurality of field devices. The field devices generate data and are connected to one another for communication, and the higher-level unit and the field devices are nodes corresponding to a distributed ledger or blockchain technology comprising transaction creation units. Each field device is assigned a transaction creation unit for creating transactions. A created transaction contains data from the field devices assigned to the transaction creation units. A block creation unit processes a created transaction to form a data block. Validation units check the data block and/or transactions for validity. The data block is valid if at least one predefined number of validation units validates the data block, wherein each node is assigned one of the validation units. The valid data block is stored in a distributed database. Link to Full Patent

This blockchain patent was originally filed on August 28, 2017  as U.S. Patent Application 16/337747 at the United Stated Patent and Trademark Office. The application was them awarded a patent grant and published as U.S. Patent 11206272. The assistant examiner was Charles Cai.

Endress+Hauser Process Solutions AG, who is the original assignee of this patent, has at least 68 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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