Patents by Inventor Colin Wilson Reid

Colin Wilson Reid has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 8887298
    Abstract: Aspects of the subject matter described herein relate to updating and validating documents secured cryptographically. In aspects, documents are encrypted to protect them from unauthorized access. An entity having write access to a document may create a new version of the document and sign the new version with a private key. Other entities may validate that the new version of the document was created by an authorized entity by using a public key available in security data associated with the version. The entities that are authorized to create a new version may change which security principals are allowed to create subsequent versions.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 13, 2007
    Date of Patent: November 11, 2014
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventor: Colin Wilson Reid
  • Patent number: 8887297
    Abstract: Aspects of the subject matter described herein relate to creating and validating cryptographically secured documents. In aspects, documents are encrypted to protect them from unauthorized access. An entity having namespace ownership rights may create a document in an authorized namespace and sign the document with a private key. Other entities may validate that the document was created by an authorized namespace owner by using a public key available in security data associated with a parent document of the document. For a root document, the public key may be available from a directory service. A namespace owner may change the namespace owner(s) that are allowed to create children of a document.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 13, 2007
    Date of Patent: November 11, 2014
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventor: Colin Wilson Reid
  • Patent number: 8738724
    Abstract: Computers are provided with a totally ordered, durable shared log. Shared storage is used and can be directly accessed by the computers over a network. Append-log operations are made atomic in the face of failures by committing provisional append ordering information onto a log. The log may comprise multiple flash packages or non-volatile memory devices, referred to as segments, although any shared storage device(s) may be used. Each log record is a multi-page stripe, where each page of a stripe is written to a different segment. Fault-tolerant protocol variants append stripes to the log, such that stripes are totally ordered in the log and each stripe is written atomically.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 25, 2010
    Date of Patent: May 27, 2014
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Philip A. Bernstein, Dahlia Malkhi, Colin Wilson Reid, Mahesh Balakrishnan
  • Patent number: 8266706
    Abstract: Aspects of the subject matter described herein relate to cryptographically controlling access to documents. In aspects, documents are encrypted to protect them from unauthorized access. A security principal seeking to access a document first obtains the document. The document includes an identifier that identifies security data associated with the document. The security data includes an encrypted portion that includes authorizations for security principals that have access to the document. A security principal having the appropriate key can decrypt its authorization in the security data to obtain one or more other keys that may be used to access the document. These other keys correspond to access rights that the security principal has with respect to the document.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 26, 2007
    Date of Patent: September 11, 2012
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventor: Colin Wilson Reid
  • Patent number: 8121980
    Abstract: Transactional record management methods and systems enabling multiple independent servers (such as database servers) using shared storage to initiate transactions in parallel without inter server communication and without locking the records used by the transaction. The in-flight transactions can be included in a shared transaction log without a final determination of whether the transaction committed. The log updates can be broadcast to each of the servers, which each parse the log, using the same rules of analysis, and therefore each compute server can independently and asynchronously come to the same conclusion as to which transactions aborted and which transactions committed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 13, 2009
    Date of Patent: February 21, 2012
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Colin Wilson Reid, Philip A. Bernstein
  • Publication number: 20110295969
    Abstract: Computers are provided with a totally ordered, durable shared log. Shared storage is used and can be directly accessed by the computers over a network. Append-log operations are made atomic in the face of failures by committing provisional append ordering information onto a log. The log may comprise multiple flash packages or non-volatile memory devices, referred to as segments, although any shared storage device(s) may be used. Each log record is a multi-page stripe, where each page of a stripe is written to a different segment. Fault-tolerant protocol variants append stripes to the log, such that stripes are totally ordered in the log and each stripe is written atomically.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 25, 2010
    Publication date: December 1, 2011
    Applicant: MICROSOFT CORPORATION
    Inventors: Philip A. Bernstein, Dahlia Malkhi, Colin Wilson Reid, Mahesh Balakrishnan
  • Publication number: 20100211554
    Abstract: Transactional record management methods and systems enabling multiple independent servers (such as database servers) using shared storage to initiate transactions in parallel without inter server communication and without locking the records used by the transaction. The in-flight transactions can be included in a shared transaction log without a final determination of whether the transaction committed. The log updates can be broadcast to each of the servers, which each parse the log, using the same rules of analysis, and therefore each compute server can independently and asynchronously come to the same conclusion as to which transactions aborted and which transactions committed.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 13, 2009
    Publication date: August 19, 2010
    Applicant: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Colin Wilson Reid, Philip A. Berstein
  • Publication number: 20090019549
    Abstract: Aspects of the subject matter described herein relate to updating and validating documents secured cryptographically. In aspects, documents are encrypted to protect them from unauthorized access. An entity having write access to a document may create a new version of the document and sign the new version with a private key. Other entities may validate that the new version of the document was created by an authorized entity by using a public key available in security data associated with the version. The entities that are authorized to create a new version may change which security principals are allowed to create subsequent versions.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 13, 2007
    Publication date: January 15, 2009
    Applicant: MICROSOFT CORPORATION
    Inventor: Colin Wilson Reid
  • Publication number: 20090019548
    Abstract: Aspects of the subject matter described herein relate to creating and validating cryptographically secured documents. In aspects, documents are encrypted to protect them from unauthorized access. An entity having namespace ownership rights may create a document in an authorized namespace and sign the document with a private key. Other entities may validate that the document was created by an authorized namespace owner by using a public key available in security data associated with a parent document of the document. For a root document, the public key may be available from a directory service. A namespace owner may change the namespace owner(s) that are allowed to create children of a document.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 13, 2007
    Publication date: January 15, 2009
    Applicant: MICROSOFT CORPORATION
    Inventor: Colin Wilson Reid
  • Publication number: 20080184039
    Abstract: Aspects of the subject matter described herein relate to cryptographically controlling access to documents. In aspects, documents are encrypted to protect them from unauthorized access. A security principal seeking to access a document first obtains the document. The document includes an identifier that identifies security data associated with the document. The security data includes an encrypted portion that includes authorizations for security principals that have access to the document. A security principal having the appropriate key can decrypt its authorization in the security data to obtain one or more other keys that may be used to access the document. These other keys correspond to access rights that the security principal has with respect to the document.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 26, 2007
    Publication date: July 31, 2008
    Applicant: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventor: Colin Wilson Reid