New patents are issued by the USPTO on Tuesdays. Both of today's Spotlight Patents continue the theme of blockchains (smart contracts, distributed ledgers) and rights management broadly construed. Assigned to Verizon, the first patent addresses techniques for authenticating an image. Assigned to Theta Labs, the second patent addresses techniques for blockchain incentivized data streaming and delivery over a decentralized network.
10,951,790, "Systems and methods for authenticating an image," assigned to Verizon.
Abstract
An image capturing device may capture image data for processing to form an image. The image capturing device may perform a hashing procedure on the image data, wherein performing the hashing procedure generates a hash value of the image data. The image capturing device may provide, to an image authentication device, the hash value of the image data, wherein the hash value of the image data is to be used by the image authentication device to validate the image based on a request to authenticate the image received from a receiving device. The image capturing device may process the image data to form the image for display to a user. The image capturing device may provide, after providing the hash value of the image data to the image authentication device, the image for display to the user.
10,951,675, "Methods and systems for blockchain incentivized data streaming and delivery over a decentralized network," assigned to Theta Labs, Inc.
Abstract
Methods and systems for incentivizing the delivery of data contents among peer nodes in a decentralized data delivery network are disclosed. The network comprises peer-to-peer (P2P) connections implemented on top of a content delivery network (CDN) having CDN servers that provide data resources to network nodes. Such a hybrid network comprises viewer peer nodes, edge cacher peer nodes, tracker servers, and a payment service module. A micropayment pool is created on a blockchain by the payment service module. A cacher peer node downloads a data resource from a CDN server, and shares portions of the data resource with viewer peer nodes in the hybrid network. In return, the cacher peer node receives from the payment service module, off-chain transactions that encode cumulative payment amounts from the micropayment pool to the cacher peer node. A last off-line transaction is submitted to the blockchain to claim a total payment amount.
