Apricorn Assigned Patent

Apricorn, Poway, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,656,854) developed by Brown, Paul Cameron, San Diego, CA, Thai, Phuoc Minh, McCandless, Michael Lee, Poway, CA, and Su, Yuhsiang, San Diego, CA, for “method and portable storage device with internal controller that can self-verify the device and self-convert the device from current mode to renewed mode without communicating with host.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Highly secure portable storage device includes a physical input device, a memory and a controller, all of which reside within or on the device itself. The controller may determine whether the device is in an exclusive or nonexclusive mode, whether the device is in a privileged mode, a locked mode or a protected mode, and whether a request is made to self-transform to a renewed mode. When the request is made and the device is in the nonexclusive mode, the device self-transforms to the renewed mode without requiring communication with the host and without requiring access code verification. When the request is made and the device is in the exclusive mode, the device self-transforms to the renewed mode only when a privileged security access code is verified. Transforming to a renewed mode sets all access codes to null and sets a new encryption key. Other methods and implementations are described.”

The patent application was filed on October 22, 2019 (16/660,770).