Data Privacy Pipeline Configuration With Placeholder Computations

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Solution Overview

Problem

Existing data sharing practices face challenges in facilitating collaborative intelligence while ensuring data privacy and controlling access, particularly due to concerns over data confidentiality, regulatory restrictions, and the potential loss of competitive advantage.

Innovation Solution

A graphical user interface is used to construct and configure a data privacy pipeline, allowing multiple parties to specify parameters for a contractual agreement to share and access data, using placeholder elements and parameterized access control to ensure data privacy and facilitate multi-party contributions.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Loss of information

If data is shared to improve collaborative intelligence, then the quality and completeness of analytics improve, but data privacy and security risks increase

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecompleteness of datasetVSAvoiddata privacy risk

Core Design Contradiction:

Loss of informationVSObject-affected harmful factors

Solution Approach 1:

The patent introduces a data trustee environment as an intermediary between data owners and data consumers. This mediator enables collaborative intelligence by allowing multiple parties to contribute data and computational steps without direct exposure of underlying data, thus improving dataset completeness while maintaining data privacy through controlled access mechanisms.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Solution Approach 2:

The patent segments the data sharing process into distinct computational steps with parameterized access control. Each computational step operates on specific data subsets with defined access permissions, allowing collaborative analytics while preventing unauthorized access to complete datasets, thereby resolving the contradiction between data completeness and privacy protection.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

2Object-affected harmful factors

If access control is restricted to ensure data privacy, then data security improves, but ease of collaboration and data sharing deteriorates

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvedata securityVSAvoidease of collaboration

Core Design Contradiction:

Object-affected harmful factorsVSEase of operation

Solution Approach 1:

The patent implements dynamic access control where permissions are assigned to computational steps rather than fixed to data sets. Access rights can be flexibly configured for different parties at different stages of the pipeline, enabling secure yet flexible collaboration where security constraints adapt to specific computational needs without hindering overall collaboration.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #15Dynamics

Solution Approach 2:

The data trustee environment provides a universal platform that handles multiple collaboration scenarios through a single interface. The system supports various access control configurations, computational step types, and data sharing models within one unified environment, making secure collaboration accessible and easy to implement across different use cases.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #6Universality (Multi-functionality)

3Ease of manufacture

If placeholder elements are used to facilitate multi-party contributions, then ease of pipeline construction improves, but system complexity increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveease of pipeline constructionVSAvoidpipeline configuration complexity

Core Design Contradiction:

Ease of manufactureVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent allows participants to define placeholder computational steps with input-output schemas before actual data or computation logic is available. This preliminary structuring enables early pipeline configuration and validation, simplifying the overall construction process while the system manages the complexity of resolving placeholders with actual implementations later.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Data Source

PatentUS12499265B2Providing a computational script into an input slot of a computational step of a data pipeline

Publication Date: 2025.12.16 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.