The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 26, 2000
Filed:
Jun. 01, 1998
Rafail Ostrovsky, Secaucus, NJ (US);
Eyal Kushilevitz, Haifa, IL;
Telcordia Technologies, Inc., Morristown, NJ (US);
Technion R&D Foundation Ltd., Haifa, IL;
Abstract
A method and apparatus for privately retrieving information from a single electronic storage device (e.g., a database) is described. An inquiring processor identifies a portion of a database memory with information for retrieval and encodes address of the information into a preselected mathematical function that conceals the identity of the selected information from the database. The inquiring processor transmits the encoded function to the database. The database cooperates by executing the encoded function on the database and transmits an encoded result that represents an evaluation of the encoded function to the inquiring processor. The inquiring processor, having knowledge of the selected mathematical function, decodes the encoded result to generate the information from the selected memory section of the database. The inquiry can be repeated until the inquiring processor can retrieve the selected information. The process minimizes the exchange of information between the database and the inquiring processor that is necessary to privately retrieve information.