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This seems to be the same as guardtimes (patented) hash-calendar? https://patents.google.com/patent/US8312528 https://patents.google.com/patent/US8312528 I don
by supermatt 6y ago
This seems to be the same as guardtimes (patented) hash-calendar? https://patents.google.com/patent/US8312528 https://patents.google.com/patent/US8312528
I dont particularly agree with an obvious use of a merkle tree being patented in this way - but it is. Probably worthy of further research if you plan to use this.
- jacques_chester 6y agoIANA patent lawyer, but I am not sure this patent's claims would apply. It creates a sequence of the natural numbers and certificates for each number in the sequence. But the approach being outlined here doesn't rely on trustworthy sequential numbers at all. Put another way: this patent may cover some specific applications of Merkle trees to natural numbers, but doesn't cover all sequential data structures. For most purposes "happened-at" or "happens-before" relations are plenty useful and don't require sequence numbers to establish the relation.