It looks like BT is ramping up its experiments with blockchain technology, patent filings reveal

BT is ramping up its work on blockchain technology, with several patents related to the distributed ledger technology filed in recent months.

The FTSE 100 telecoms firm which also provides IT services to high profile clients globally, such as Nationwide Bank, has filed at least six patents since the start of the year in relation to distributed ledger technology.

One of the filings details technology relating to a mechanism for detecting and mitigating a blockchain attack and which it said would be “advantageous”.

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The patent noted: “Despite the architecture of blockchain systems, malicious attacks present a threat to the security and reliability of blockchains. One such malicious attack involves a single entity (or entities under common control) procuring or appearing to procure sufficient computing resource to constitute more than half of all mining resource working with a blockchain.”

The so-called majority attack BT describes has never been executed against the bitcoin blockchain, the most high profile blockchain which brought the distributed ledger technology to fame.

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Another of the patents is for “access control using a blockchain data structure”.

Gery Ducatel and Joshua Daniel, both researchers at BT Global Services, are named on the patents.

The records of the World Intellectual Property Organisation show at least seven blockchain patent applications have been made by the telecoms company since July last year. Prior to that, there is no record of patents made by the company in this burgeoning area of technology.

A spokesperson for the firm said: “BT has filed for patents in blockchain technology and is one of the many areas in which BT is researching.”