Salesforce Granted Patent for Blockchain-based Anti-spam Solution

Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) can be added to the list of tech giants that has a blockchain-based patent on its belt.

On Tuesday (November 6), it was revealed by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that the software company received approval for a patent to prevent unwanted and spam emails from entering a user’s inbox.

According to the documents, the system will also work to improve existing features in an inbox in order to tell the difference between spam and regular emails.

The patent describes that in order to ensure the legitimacy of the email message, the email messaging system will have a duplicate server that will record a “selected component” of the message received into a block on the blockchain.

Once the second email is received, the second email server can decide whether the selection from that initial email is legitimate. If the messages are deemed a match, the email is marked as wanted. If content has been changed, however, then the email goes directly into the spam folder.

“The [system] can help ensure that messages and attachments to those messages have not been modified during transit over a network,” the patent filing explains. “The [system] can also better identify legitimate (wanted) messages and distinguish them from illegitimate (unsolicited) messages.”

The document further says that if used in the right context, the “immutability and distributed nature” blockchain has makes it so it’s difficult to modify information once it has been added to the blockchain.

“This permanence applies to all information, which can include things like sender and recipient information,” the patent adds. Further, the system will also be able to determine the authenticity of documents such as medical records, educational transcripts, deeds, property rights and legal documents to name a few.

Shares of Salesforce.com were up 5.88 percent over Wednesday’s trading period to close the session at US$141.79. After hours trading bumped its stock price up by 0.20 percent to US$142.07 as of 6:13 p.m. EST on Wednesday.

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Securities Disclosure: I, Jocelyn Aspa, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.