Researchers Submit Patent Application, “Review Engine With Blockchain-Based Verification”, for Approval (USPTO 20220138791): Patent Application

2022 MAY 23 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- From Washington, D.C., NewsRx journalists report that a patent application by the inventor Dorward, Ian Gordon Ashley (Chesterfield, MO, US), filed on October 29, 2021, was made available online on May 5, 2022.

No assignee for this patent application has been made.

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Web sites and services which offer users the ability to contribute reviews of various people, businesses, products, or services, and access others’ reviews of same, are quite popular and fulfill a needed role. Two of the main problems review sites and services face is first, accountability of reviewers, and second, protection of user identities. That is, first, there is often no mechanism by which reviewers can be held accountable for being who they claim to be, i.e., a person who has legitimately entered into a transaction with, used a product of, or otherwise has had some substantive relationship with a provider entity, organization, or business. Second, at least some anonymity of reviewers is often seen as important in order to protect these reviewers and their identities in the public sphere, but anonymity increases the likelihood of reviewers posting low quality reviews such as, e.g., personal grudges and attempts to sabotage or impugn individuals or businesses for reasons other than the quality of their products or services.

“Related to both of these problems is the potential for providers (i.e., those individuals or businesses who are being reviewed or whose products are being reviewed) to claim that some reviews are inauthentic when they are authentic, and the potential for review sites or reviewers to modify or otherwise tamper with reviews. Often, the mere possibility or appearance of these concerns can be enough for users to lose trust in a particular review site, whether they are actually happening or not. Even if review sites may not be modifying or tampering with reviews, there is still the possibility of government censorship, hacking attempts, and other issues.

“While in some cases the provable nature of a reviewer’s identity can assist in proving the authenticity of a review, this provability also could carry with it the risks of violating the privacy of the reviewer. Especially within the field of healthcare in the United States, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”) outlined several categories of Protected Health Information (“PHI”) and prescribed severe penalties for any party that would violate the privacy of patients by divulging PHI. Existing online review systems often allow public visibility of the user via linkage with a username or email address that itself constitutes PHI; thus, the provider being reviewed runs the risk of violating HIPAA regulations by publicly rebutting or otherwise interacting with a given review. Similar issues arise with the general privacy protections enumerated in the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) in Europe, which shares commonalities with privacy acts that have passed or will likely be passed in California and other states within the United States.

“Thus, there is a need in the field of review systems to create new and useful systems and methods for providing review content which is verifiable in a public blockchain network. The source of the problem, as discovered by the inventors, is a lack of digital identity certification, verified interactions between users and providers (or their products/services), and review content which is guaranteed to be free of censorship or tampering. Further, there is a need for a de-identified or pseudonymous handling of user/reviewer identity such that the user does not divulge their own private details and the provider can interact with reviews without violating the privacy rights of the user.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent application, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventor’s summary information for this patent application: “The invention overcomes the existing problems by providing review content which is verifiable in a public blockchain network. The system of verification involves three primary input components. One of the components is an identity verification for a user of a review engine; the system assigns a unique pseudonymous identity to the user based on the identity verification. The pseudonymous identity of the user is important to protect user privacy, and to allow providers to interact with reviews without revealing the identity of users to those providers or otherwise revealing any sensitive information about those users (such as, e.g., Protected Health Information within a medical context). The second component is an identity verification for a provider within the review engine, which allows for the generation of an authentication token to be displayed for a user client device. A third component involves the capture of that authentication token by the user, which certifies the interaction with the provider’s product or service and generates and displays a review-in-progress. The capture of the authentication token and the user identity verification can occur in any order, but both are required in order to finalize the verification. Finally, the system then receives a completed review from the user client device, and records hashed data associated with the completed review into a transaction record on a public blockchain network. The hashing of the data allows for confirmation that the input data (i.e., at least the user, the provider, and the review contents) have not changed from their original form, yet prevents back-solving from the hash output to find the original input data. Thus, the identity elements and the review contents can be siloed in a protected environment while still allowing for a public audit which ensures that their content has not been altered.

“In some embodiments, the system hashes one or more of: the pseudonymous identity of the user, verified identity of the provider, and contents of the completed review to generate the hashed data.

“In some embodiments, the system provides the hashed data to users of the review engine such that they can check the hashed data against the transaction record on the public blockchain network to verify the contents have not been altered.

“In some embodiments, the system publishes the completed review from the user such that it is accessible to users of the review engine via a user interface. In some embodiments, previously completed reviews are published and accessible via the user interface as well.

“In some embodiments, the system allows the provider to interact with a review by providing a response to its numerical rating or narrative review comments; this might constitute thanking reviewers for their time, or it might constitute a counterpoint or a rebuttal to the review. In any case, the pseudonymization of the user enables the provider to interact with the review without confirming or exposing the user’s private details.

“In some embodiments, the review engine may be utilized to provide a healthcare review platform, such that patients may review, rate, and evaluate their doctors and/or the overall patient experience. Doctors provide verification that those filling out reviews were in fact their patients and an interaction took place, and blockchain-based verification and auditability are provided. In other embodiments, the review engine may be contemplated to be utilized for a variety of other purposes. Some examples may include, e.g., systems or platforms for reviews of legal providers (attorneys, law firms, etc.); professional and career-based recommendations; reviews of restaurants, bars, and similar venues; reviews of products or services provided at a digital marketplace; or any other suitable contemplated use for reviews, ratings, or recommendations.

“Further areas of applicability of the present disclosure will become apparent from the detailed description, the claims and the drawings. The detailed description and specific examples are intended for illustration only and are not intended to limit the scope of the disclosure.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A method for providing review content which is verifiable in a public blockchain network, comprising: receiving an identity verification for a user of a review engine; assigning a unique pseudonymous identity to the user based on the identity verification; receiving an identity verification for a provider on the review engine; generating an authentication token unique to the provider to be displayed on a user client device associated with the user of the review engine; in response to the user capturing the authentication token via the user client device, generating a review-in-progress to be displayed on the user client device; receiving a completed review from the user client device; and recording hashed data associated with the completed review into a transaction record on a public blockchain network, such that the transaction record can be publicly audited on the public blockchain network.

“2. The method of claim 1, further comprising: hashing one or more of the pseudonymous identity of the user, the verified identity of the provider, and the contents of the completed review to generate the hashed data associated with the completed review.

“3. The method of claim 1, further comprising: generating a machine-readable file comprising the contents of the completed review; and hashing the machine-readable file to generate the hashed data associated with the completed review.

“4. The method of claim 3, wherein the machine-readable file is a JSON file or other JavaScript-readable file.

“5. The method of claim 1, wherein the user of the review engine is a customer of a service, the provider on the review engine is a provider of the service, and the completed review represents a review of the provider by the customer.

“6. The method of claim 1, wherein the user of the review engine is a patient, the provider on the review engine is a doctor, and the completed review represents a review of the doctor by the patient.

“7. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the authentication token and the review-in-progress is a non-fungible token (NFT) issued on the public blockchain network.

“8. The method of claim 1, wherein a plurality of decentralized servers and/or storage mechanisms are employed such that no central authority is in control of the review-in-progress nor the completed review.

“9. The method of claim 1, wherein the identity verification for the user is received from one of: a third-party identity verification service, or an internal Know Your Customer (KYC) process.

“10. The method of claim 1, further comprising: providing, to a plurality of users of the review engine, a machine-readable file containing the input data associated with the completed review, and a hash of the input data, such that the users of the review engine can check at least the input data against the hash and the hash against the associated transaction record on the public blockchain network to verify that the contents of the review and the associated transaction record have not been altered.

“11. The method of claim 1, further comprising: publishing the completed review from the user such that it is accessible to at least users of the review engine via a user interface.

“12. The method of claim 8, further comprising: receiving a request from the user to remove the completed review from the user; and removing the completed review from the user such that it is no longer accessible to at least users of the review engine via the user interface.

“13. The method of claim 1, wherein the identity verification for the provider associates the provider with a public profile.

“14. The method of claim 10, further comprising: providing, on the public profile of the provider, access to all previously published reviews for the provider.

“15. The method of claim 1, wherein the identity verification for the provider comprises a verification from the provider that the transaction between the provider and the user occurred.

“16. The method of claim 1, wherein the authentication token is a QR code or other visual code which can be captured.

“17. The method of claim 1, wherein the generated review-in-progress is configured to be completed by the user at a later time.

“18. The method of claim 1, further comprising: In response to receiving the completed review from the user, providing a reward to the user.

“19. The method of claim 1, wherein the completed review comprises a quantitative rating or ranking of the provider by the user.

“20. A non-transitory computer-readable medium containing instructions for providing review content which is verifiable in a public blockchain network, comprising: instructions for receiving an identity verification for a user of a review engine; instructions for assigning a unique pseudonymous identity to the user based on the identity verification; instructions for receiving an identity verification for a provider on the review engine; instructions for generating an authentication token unique to the provider to be displayed on a user client device associated with the user of the review engine; in response to the user capturing the authentication token via the user client device, instructions for generating a review-in-progress to be displayed on the user client device; instructions for receiving a completed review from the user client device; instructions for recording hashed data associated with the completed review into a transaction record on a public blockchain network, such that the transaction record can be publicly audited on the public blockchain network.”

For additional information on this patent application, see: Dorward, Ian Gordon Ashley. Review Engine With Blockchain-Based Verification. Filed October 29, 2021 and posted May 5, 2022. Patent URL: https://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220220138791%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20220138791&RS=DN/20220138791

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