U.S. Patent 10360191 was awarded to INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION on July 23, 2019 and is entitled “Establishing overlay trust consensus for blockchain trust validation system.” The first named inventor is Nitin Gaur of Round Rock, TX. The abstract contains an overview of the patent disclosure:

The system, method, and computer program product described herein provides a built-in feedback mechanism for a blockchain to sanction validator nodes that consistently “vote” in a manner that does not match the ultimate consensus. The method includes receiving a vote on whether to add a transaction to the blockchain, comparing the vote to a consensus decision on whether to add the transaction to the blockchain, determining based on the comparison that the vote does not match the consensus decision, in response to determining that the vote does not match the consensus decision, incrementing a value associated with the validator node in a feedback registry, determining that the value associated with the validator node is above a predetermined threshold value, and in response to determining that the value associated with the validator node is above the predetermined threshold, proposing a sanction of the validator node to the plurality of validator nodes. Link to Full Patent

This blockchain patent was originally filed on October 07, 2016  as U.S. Patent Application 15/288435 at the United Stated Patent and Trademark Office. The application was them awarded a patent grant and published as U.S. Patent 10360191. The assistant examiner was Michal Lawrence Bogacki.

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 6 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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