ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 24 -- United States Patent no. 12,743,248, issued on Sept. 22, was assigned to Alipay (Hangzhou) Information Technology Co. Ltd. (Hangzhou, China).

"Data sorting methods and apparatuses, devices, and readable storage media" was invented by Wuqiong Pan (Hangzhou, China), Tao Wei (Hangzhou, China), Tingting Li (Hangzhou, China), Haonan Feng (Hangzhou, China), Tianyi Li (Hangzhou, China) and Zhongtian Qian (Hangzhou, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "This specification discloses a data sorting method and apparatus, a device, and a readable storage medium. In the data sorting method provided in this specification, a non-reference ciphertext is updated based on a first no...