SPrint Communications Assigned Patent

SPrint Communications Company L.P., Overland Park, KS, has been assigned a patent (9,336,375) developed by Sharma, Sanjay K., Olathe, KS, and Lee, Woojae, Manhattan, KS, for a “restricting access to data on portable storage media based on access to a private intranet.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Systems, products, and methods are disclosed for enabling access to encrypted data stored on a portable storage medium. In one embodiment, an attempt to communicate with a certain intranet is made. If this attempt succeeds, then access is granted to the data stored on the portable storage device, but if access to the intranet is not granted, then access to the data stored on the portable storage device is also not granted. Denying access can include preventing the portable storage device from even being recognized by a requesting device, being recognized but not presented, or can include showing that such encrypted data exists, but denying access to the data in an unencrypted format.“

The patent application was filed on July 28, 2009 (12/510,788).