Proton World International Assigned Patent

Proton World International N.V., Diegem, Belgium, (acquired by STMicroelectronics in 2003) has been assigned a patent (10,223,195) developed by Dawirs, Michel, Wezembeek-Oppem, Belgium, and Docquier, Guillaume, Liege, Belgium, for a “counter in a flash memory.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A counter is stored in a page of a flash memory having a plurality of pages. Header information is written to the page. The header information includes a first word containing a number of the page, a second word containing a first value of the counter, and a third word containing an initial error control code, which takes into account the first value of the counter. Counter information is written into frames of the selected page. The frames have a same number of words. Writing counter information into a frame includes writing a counter identifier that identifies the counter and a value independent from the counter identifier into the frame. A current value of the counter is determined based on the first value of the counter in the header data and frames of the selected page into which the counter information is written.”

The patent application was filed on December 14, 2016 (15/378,569).