U.S. Patent 10621376 was awarded to INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION on April 14, 2020 and is entitled “Personal ledger blockchain.” The first named inventor is Donna N. Dillenberger of Yorktown Heights, NY. The abstract contains an overview of the patent disclosure:

A system, method, and computer readable storage medium configured for storing encrypted data in a blockchain. To write additional data in a blockchain, a request is received at a computing node. The request is typically cryptographically signed by a user system to include a new transaction with additional data in the blockchain. The additional data is previously encrypted with an encryption key. A new block that records the new transaction with additional data in the blockchain is added. To read the additional data in a blockchain, a request is received at a computing node with a transaction identifier and a decryption key from a user system to access data journaled as part of the blockchain in the transaction database. The transaction database is searched using the identifier. In response, to finding the corresponding block in the blockchain, the data is decrypted using the decryption key. Link to Full Patent

This blockchain patent was originally filed on April 19, 2018  as U.S. Patent Application 15/957142 at the United Stated Patent and Trademark Office. The application was them awarded a patent grant and published as U.S. Patent 10621376. The primary examiner was Gheng-Feng Huang.

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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