Permissible Query Specification in Data Privacy Pipelines

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Solution Overview

Problem

Existing data sharing techniques face challenges in facilitating collaborative intelligence while ensuring data privacy and controlling access, often hindered by concerns over competitive advantage, regulatory restrictions, and labor-intensive data management.

Innovation Solution

A graphical user interface enables tenants to specify parameters for a contractual agreement to share and access data, allowing multi-party development of a data privacy pipeline with placeholder elements and parameterized access control, ensuring data privacy through a data trustee environment.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Loss of information

If data is shared to generate collaborative intelligence, then the quality and completeness of insights improve, but data privacy and security concerns worsen

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecompleteness of datasetVSAvoiddata privacy risk

Core Design Contradiction:

Loss of informationVSObject-affected harmful factors

Solution Approach 1:

A data trustee environment is introduced as an intermediary between data owners and data consumers. The trustee holds and manages the collaborative dataset, allowing multi-party access and analysis while enforcing privacy constraints and access controls. This mediator enables collaborative intelligence generation without direct data sharing between parties, thus maintaining privacy while improving data completeness.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

2Object-affected harmful factors

If access control is implemented to protect data privacy, then data security improves, but ease of access to data worsens

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvedata securityVSAvoidease of data access

Core Design Contradiction:

Object-affected harmful factorsVSEase of operation

Solution Approach 1:

The data trustee environment implements a universal access control framework that serves multiple functions simultaneously: authentication, authorization, audit logging, and compliance enforcement. This multi-functional system maintains strong security while providing streamlined access for authorized users through a single integrated interface, improving ease of operation without compromising security.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #6Universality (Multi-functionality)

Solution Approach 2:

The system enables authorized users to self-manage their access rights and query permissions through the trustee interface. Users can independently configure their own access levels, view audit logs, and manage their data consumption rights without requiring manual administrative approval for each access request, thereby improving ease of access while maintaining security controls.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #25Self-service

3Object-affected harmful factors

If a data trustee environment is established to manage shared data, then data privacy is maintained, but system complexity increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvedata privacy protectionVSAvoidsystem architecture complexity

Core Design Contradiction:

Object-affected harmful factorsVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

Multiple privacy protection mechanisms (access control lists, encryption, audit logging, compliance rules) are merged into a single integrated data trustee environment. Rather than implementing separate systems for each privacy concern, the trustee combines all these functions into one unified platform, reducing overall system complexity while maintaining comprehensive privacy protection.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #5Merging (Combining)

4Ease of manufacture

If placeholder elements are allowed in pipeline construction, then ease of pipeline development improves, but data management complexity increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveease of pipeline constructionVSAvoiddata pipeline complexity

Core Design Contradiction:

Ease of manufactureVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The system allows placeholder elements to be created and configured in advance during pipeline design, before actual data sources are connected. Users can define the complete pipeline structure, transformations, and outputs using placeholders, enabling early validation and testing of the data logic. This preliminary construction improves ease of pipeline development while the system automatically manages the complexity of resolving placeholders to actual data sources later.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Data Source

PatentUS12518049B2Specifying characteristics of a permissible query on an output of a data pipeline

Publication Date: 2026.01.06 MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC

AI summary

Embodiments of the present disclosure are directed to techniques for constructing and configuring a data privacy pipeline to generate collaborative data in a data trustee environment. An interface of the trustee environment can serve as a sandbox for parties to generate, contribute to, or otherwise configure a data privacy pipeline by selecting, composing, and arranging any number of input datasets, computational steps, and contract outputs. (e.g., output datasets, permissible named queries on collaborative data). The interface may allow a contributing party to use one or more unspecified “placeholder” elements, such as placeholder datasets or placeholder computations, as building blocks in a pipeline under development. Parameterized access control may authorize designated participants to access, view, and/or contribute to designated portions of a contact or pipeline. Authorized participants may indicate their approval, and the pipeline may be deployed in the data trustee environment pursuant to the agreed upon parameters.