Apple has been granted a patent for ‘Proving Membership Using Crytographic Identities.”
About the patent
The patent generally relates to group communications on electronic devices and, more particularly, to proving membership using cryptographic identities. In the patent Apple notes that an electronic device such as a laptop, tablet, or smartphone, may be configured to participate in group communication sessions. Document collaboration sessions, for example, allow people in remote locations to view and/or modify a document with each other in real-time.
Apple’s patent involves a method in which users participating in a group communication session with an electronic device may invite other users to access items with their participating electronic device. In one or more implementations, a user may initiate a group communication session to invite one or more other users to access items with their participating electronic devices.
Summary of the patent
Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “Aspects of the subject technology include obtaining, by a first device associated with a first user account, one or more item-specific public keys of one or more devices associated with a second user account and generating a data structure representing the one or more devices associated with the second user account based on the one or more item-specific public keys.
“Aspects may also include providing an identifier of the data structure to a server for association with the item and generating an invitation for the second user account to access the item. Aspects may further include providing the invitation to a second device of the one or more devices associated with the second user account to provide the second device with access to the item via the server based on at least a portion of the data structure and a respective item-specific public key of the second device.”
