Blockchain Startup Bitfury Files for Electronics Design Patent

Venture-backed blockchain startup Bitfury is seeking a patent related to electronics design, public documents reveal.

The US Patent and Trademark Office published the application for "Layouts of transmission gates and related systems and techniques" on July 27, attributed to Bitfury Group Limited, based in Georgetown, Kentucky, with Bitfury CTO Valery Nebesny listed as the sole inventor.

The patent itself is focused on transmission gates, also known as analog switches, which allow electronic signals to pass through a certain point when activated. According to the text, the application covers both the layout design as well as the methodology for creating the layout.

The application makes a sole reference to bitcoin mining when describing possible uses for the patent. Bitfury is one of the world's bitcoin mining chip developers, and according to available network data mined roughly 6% of transaction blocks in the past 24 hours.

It states:

"In some embodiments, the multi-bit transmission gate described herein may be integrated into any suitable device including, without limitation, a microprocessor, liquid-crystal display (LCD) panel, light-emitting diode (LED) display panel, television, mobile electronic device (e.g., laptop computer, tablet computer, smart phone, mobile phone, smart watch, etc.), computer (e.g., server computer, desktop computer, etc.), bitcoin mining device, etc."

Public records show that it's a follow-up application to a patent awarded to Bitfury in December. To date, Bitfury has been awarded four patents.

Computer chip image via Shutterstock