Tech Giant Lenovo Applies For Blockchain Patent for Validation of Physical Documents

According to the latest filing with the U.S Patent and Trademarks Office, tech giant Lenovo has applied for a patent of an electronic device which used the blockchain technology in order to ensure the integrity of a signed physical document.

A brief summary of the patent explains that a processor will identify an “integrity symbol” within the document and will further convert that to an “integrity map”. Later, it will compare the map to the physical document thereby ensuring the integrity of the document.

The use of digital signatures encoded in the document provides the assurance that the document has not been modified after signing. To implement this, the electronic devices comprises an imager which creates a digital image of the document. The device contains a processor, memory, document integrity module, input device with an imager and an output device with a printer.

The filing further notes that due to the technological complexities and lack of widely accepted standards, several businesses have not switched to accepting digital signatures yet. Moreover, in case of physical signatures on the documents that are scanned and sent electronically, there is no evidence or assurance of the fact that the document has not been modified after signing.

Moreover, the existing digital signature technologies do not provide tamper-proof mechanisms in order to verify the documents that are printed with ink. Lenovo says that the Blockchain security would allow making it sure “that they have the current authentic physical document even if multiple paper copies exist and multiple people have made entries in the chain of modification. To validate a paper copy, a user of the electronic device takes a picture of the printed code on the physical document."

In case if multiple copies of the physical document come into existence, they would appear “as orphaned blocks in the chain.”

The storage device proposed here could take entirely a form of software, or hardware, or a combination of both. It is supposed to include an electrical connection; a portable computer diskette; a hard disk; a random access memory; a read-only memory; an erasable, programmable, read-only memory; a portable, compact disc, read-only memory; an optical storage device; a magnetic storage device; or any combination of the any of the above.

Lenovo claims that the benefit of such a product is that all parties holding the copies of a given document can make sure that they are viewing an accurate copy at any given time and make sure that it has not been tempered-with after being signed.