Dropbox Assigned Six Patents

Managing content item collections
Dropbox, Inc., San Francisco, CA, has been assigned a patent (11593549) developed by Rochiramani, Sunny, San Francisco, CA, Valloppillil, Vinod, Berkeley, CA, Hurwitz, Jacob, Rudolph, Katherine R., Paduano, Francesco, Sprauve, Eric, Kofman, Igor, and Staley, Aaron, San Francisco, CA, for “managing content item collections.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Disclosed are systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for managing content item collections. For example, in embodiment, a client device may receive first user input selecting a content item collection. The client device may generate a graphical user interface for presenting the content item collection. The content item collection may include one or more tiles. Each tile may correspond to a content item embedded into the content item collection and stored by a content management system. The client device may present the content item collection including the one or more tiles. The client device may present, within each of the one or more tiles, an image representing the corresponding content item.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-12-27 (17/646068).

Utilizing encryption key exchange and rotation to share passwords via shared folder
Dropbox, Inc., San Francisco, CA, has been assigned a patent (11595207) developed by Xu, Jiayi, Redmond, WA, Heeringa, Brent, Williamstown, MA, Hannon, Andrew

Leeds, MA, and Prior, Katherine, Mercer Island, WA, for “utilizing encryption key exchange and rotation to share passwords via a shared folder.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “This disclosure describes methods, non-transitory computer readable storage media, and systems that provide secure password sharing across a plurality of users and client devices via a shared folder. For example, in one or more embodiments, the disclosed system retrieves a public key set including public encryption keys for client devices having access to the shared folder. The disclosed system provides the public key set to a client device requesting to share the shared folder. The disclosed system receives an encrypted payload for the shared folder and a shared encryption key that is utilized to encrypt the payload and is encrypted in the shared folder utilizing the public key set. The disclosed system also detects key rotation events and notifies one or more client devices to generate a modified shared encryption key and re-encrypt the payload for storage within the shared folder.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-12-23 (17/132288).

Storage constrained synchronization engine
Dropbox, Inc., San Francisco, CA, has been assigned a patent (11562000) developed by Goldberg, Isaac, and Newhouse, Benjamin Zeis, San Francisco, CA, for a “storage constrained synchronization engine.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A client application of a content management system provides instructions for synchronizing content items and placeholder items using a local file journal and updated file journal. The client application compares entries in the updated file journal to entries in the local file journal to determine modifications to make to content items or placeholder items stored in a shared content storage directory on the client device. Based on the result of the comparison, the client application replaces placeholder items with content items or replaces content items with placeholder items.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-05-29 (16/887317).

Scaling HDFS for hive
Dropbox, Inc., San Francisco, CA, has been assigned a patent (11526464) developed by Gandhi, Ashish, San Francisco, CA, for “scaling HDFS for hive.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A non-transitory computer-readable storage media storing program instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform: receiving a query to the distributed file system, determining a particular partition, associated with the data warehouse system, targeted by the query, accessing a repository associated with the data warehouse system to determine whether a partition-to-cluster mapping entry for the particular partition targeted by the query exists in the repository, in response to a determination that the entry for the particular partition exists in the repository, obtaining, from the entry for the particular partition, an identifier of a particular cluster to which the particular partition is assigned by the entry for the particular partition, the particular cluster being one of a plurality of clusters of the distributed file system, each cluster of the plurality of clusters having one name node and a plurality of data nodes.”

The patent application was filed on 2019-03-29 (16/369582).

Snapshot Isolation in distributed storage
Dropbox, Inc., San Francisco, CA, has been assigned a patent (11474977) developed by Wetterau, David, and Walker, Braden, San Francisco, CA, for a “snapshot isolation in a distributed storage system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Systems and methods for snapshot isolation in a distributed storage system M are provided. In some examples, a method can include receiving a request for data from a data store comprising a plurality of storage nodes, the request comprising a key associated with the data and a request timestamp, identifying a storage node in the plurality of storage nodes from which to read the data based on the key and a mapping of keys to storage nodes, determining that the request is associated with a transaction comprising operations associated with at least one other storage node in the plurality of storage nodes, determining a status of the entry for the key in the key-value table based on a lookup of a transaction table using the transaction identifier, and providing the data when the status of the entry for the key indicates the data is ready to be read.”

The patent application was filed on 2019-09-30 (16/588960).

Storage scheme switching in distributed storage
Dropbox, Inc., San Francisco, CA, has been assigned a patent (11422721) developed by Loh, Michael, El Cerrito, CA, Horn, Daniel R., Mountain View, CA, Kavalar, Andraz, Lichtenberg, David, Sung, Austin, San Francisco, CA, Feng, Shi, Millbrae, CA, and Baek, Jongmin, Foster, CA, for a “data storage scheme switching in a distributed data storage system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Systems and methods for dynamic and automatic data storage scheme switching in a distributed data storage system. A machine learning-based policy for computing probable future content item access patterns based on historical content item access patterns is employed to dynamically and automatically switch the storage of content items (e.g., files, digital data, photos, text, audio, video, streaming content, cloud documents, etc.) between different data storage schemes. The different data storage schemes may have different data storage cost and different data access cost characteristics. For example, the different data storage schemes may encompass different types of data storage devices, different data compression schemes, and/or different data redundancy schemes.”

The patent application was filed on 2020-04-03 (16/839605).