U.S. Patent 11042873 was awarded to INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION on June 22, 2021 and is entitled “Blockchain: automatic fork protection.” The first named inventor is Rafal P. Konik of Oronoco, MN. The abstract contains an overview of the patent disclosure:

Systems and methods for providing automatic fork protection including determining that a transaction having fork protection was included in a first block that was appended to a blockchain, that a hash of the first block was validated, that a consensus decision was made by validator nodes approving the first block for addition to the blockchain, that a second block was appended to the blockchain after the first block, that the second block comprises a hash that is not based on the first block, that the first block was on a first fork and the second block was on a second fork, that the blockchain was resolved in favor of the second fork, and that the transaction failed as a result of the blockchain being resolved in favor of the second fork. The method including compensating a party that submitted the failed transaction based on the fork protection. Link to Full Patent

This blockchain patent was originally filed on December 03, 2018  as U.S. Patent Application 16/207744 at the United Stated Patent and Trademark Office. The application was them awarded a patent grant and published as U.S. Patent 11042873. The primary examiner was Kito R Robinson.

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION, who is the original assignee of this patent, has at least 150818 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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