U.S. Patent 11190520 was awarded to Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC on November 30, 2021 and is entitled “Blockchain smart contracts for digital asset access.” The first named inventor is Marc Mercuri of Bothell, WA. The abstract contains an overview of the patent disclosure:

A computing device includes a communications interface that communicatively couples the computing device with a plurality of other computing devices that collectively maintain a blockchain. A storage machine holds a plurality of blocks comprising the blockchain, where a particular block of the plurality defines a smart contract. The smart contract includes: (i) a first access criterion granted to an entity for a digital asset, and (ii) one or more functions that, when an associated condition is satisfied, change the first access criterion to a second access criterion, the condition being satisfied when one or more variables have specific values. A logic machine is configured to receive a current value of a variable and determine that the current value satisfies the associated condition. A request is transmitted to the plurality of computing devices to update the first access criterion to the second access criterion. Link to Full Patent

This blockchain patent was originally filed on January 29, 2019  as U.S. Patent Application 16/261448 at the United Stated Patent and Trademark Office. The application was them awarded a patent grant and published as U.S. Patent 11190520. The primary examiner was Arvin Eskandarnia.

Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, who is the original assignee of this patent, has at least 47743 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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