Merck Sharp and Dohme Assigned Patent

Merck Sharp and Dohme Corp., Rahway, NJ, has been assigned a patent (10,261,711) developed by Pasirstein, David Brett, Morristown, NJ, for a “proof of non-tampering for stored data.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”An application shim receives transactions that will update a portion of data stored in an existing data store. A reduced representation of the pre-update portion of data is generated and compared to an existing reduced representation of the same portion of data to verify that the data has not been tampered with. An updated reduced representation is generated based on the post-update portion of data. The updated reduced representation is added to a distributed ledger such as a block chain. Further verification of non-tampering may be provided by comparing the reduced representation stored by the system and the one appended to the blockchain. If a discrepancy is identified, appropriate corrective action may be taken, such as blocking further transactions, notifying responsible entities, and/or restoring the data from a backup.”

The patent application was filed on January 25, 2018 (15/880,476).