On June 23, 2026 the USPTO issued a patent that is worth reading not for the phrase in its title but for the verb buried in its independent claim. The title — "Application framework using blockchain-based asset ownership" — describes a register: a way to record, on a distributed ledger, who owns how much of an asset, with a separate digital wallet, private key, and blockchain address for each owner. That much is the framework. The granted independent claim then names a specific thing you do with that framework, and the thing it names is a vote. The patent is US12664541B2, assigned to Nasdaq, Inc., and unlike a published application it is now an enforceable grant. The question for a claims reader is therefore not "what did Nasdaq disclose" but "what does the issued claim actually cover."

Start with claim 1, the independent system claim, because the limitations there are the patent. It recites a distributed blockchain computer system of multiple nodes, each storing a copy of the chain, and a server computer system coupled to client computers and to that blockchain. The server holds, in memory, a plurality of digital wallets — one associated with the asset, each storing a blockchain address and an association to a private cryptographic key. Using a blockchain address from one of those wallets, the server accesses recorded ownership information: not a single owner, but ownership of "respective groups of one or more units of the asset for each of a plurality of owners." In plain terms, the ledger holds a cap-table-style record of fractional ownership. Everything to that point is the register half of the framework, and it tracks the abstract closely.

The limitation that gives the claim its character comes next. "For each of the plurality of owners," the server distributes at least one voting token to that owner's wallet — or to a proxy's wallet — and the number of votes distributed to each owner is "in accordance with a respective number of units of assets identified in the recorded ownership information." The claim then starts a voting event; the blockchain receives, at one or more addresses, the voting tokens returned from the owners' or proxies' wallets; and the server validates each received token "based upon a source blockchain address and a destination blockchain address," tallies "a distribution of votes for each of a plurality of voting choices," and outputs a result. Read literally, the captured invention is a token-weighted ballot run on-chain: ownership on the ledger determines voting power, the vote is cast by moving tokens between blockchain addresses, and validity is checked by address rather than by an off-chain roll. That is a narrower, more concrete thing than the title's "application framework" implies, and it is the version of the framework the issued claim is directed to.

Systems and methods are provided for recording ownership information in a distributed ledger (such as a blockchain), and for performing application processing utilizing the distributed ledger. An example server computer system is configured to: record on a blockchain ownership information of an asset; to configure, for each owner of the asset, a digital wallet associated with a private cryptographic key and at least one blockchain address; using a blockchain address from a digital wallet to access ownership information in the blockchain; perform application processing using the accessed ownership information; and record in the blockchain, updated ownership information or other information associated with the ownership information in accordance with the performed application processing.— Application framework using blockchain-based asset ownership, US12664541B2

The patent carries two more independent claims that frame the same invention in different statutory categories. Claim 11 recites the method form — "A method performed by one or more processors of a server computer system" — walking the same steps of accessing per-owner ownership, distributing voting tokens proportional to units held, running the voting event, validating by source and destination address, and outputting a tally. Claim 20 recites the article-of-manufacture form, a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions that, when executed, perform those operations. The substance across all three is the same: the voting event is not an optional embodiment buried in the specification, it is recited in the independent claims, which is what makes this grant about voting rather than about ledgers in the abstract.

Where the grant sits in the CPC landscape

The classification is consistent with that reading and locates the grant precisely. The lead symbol is G06Q 20/3678 — within G06Q 20 (payment architectures and protocols), the subgroup for transactions using a distributed ledger or blockchain. That is the canonical home for on-chain payment and asset-transfer mechanics, and it is where the network's blockchain patent beat concentrates. Alongside it the grant carries G06Q 20/3829 (protocols involving key or certificate management, the per-owner private-key and wallet limitation), G06Q 40/04 (exchange or trading of financial instruments), and G06Q 2220/00, an indexing tag for business-method cryptography. The CPC spread is itself a compact description of the claim: a blockchain ledger (20/3678), one key per owner (20/3829), holding tradable financial instruments (40/04). Notably the symbols sit in the G06Q business-method/payments family rather than in H04L 9/50, the blockchain-specific cryptographic-mechanism subclass — the claimed contribution is in the application and settlement layer, not in a new consensus or cryptographic primitive.

The grant does not stand alone in the file history so much as it stands at the end of a line. It is the third issued patent in a continuation family that shares the exact title, the same seven-inventor team — Richard Demarinis, Hedi Uustalu, Thomas Fay, Dominick Paniscotti, Triin Parvits, Rachana Rajkumar, and Junning Tong — and the same core abstract. The first grant, US11397944B2, issued July 26, 2022; the second, US11941613B2, issued March 26, 2024; and now US12664541B2 on June 23, 2026, each carrying the G06Q 20/3678 lead class. Continuation practice lets an applicant return to a single disclosure and pursue fresh independent claims, and the through-line here is that the family keeps the blockchain-ownership register constant while the issued independent claims attach it to different application logic. This grant's contribution to the family is the voting application stated in its claim language.

For a reader weighing the coverage, two cautions follow from the claim text itself rather than from any judgment about the patent. First, the captured scope is specific: the independent claims recite a voting event with token distribution proportional to recorded units and validation by source and destination blockchain address; a different on-chain application — a dividend, a transfer, a corporate action — would be read against these particular limitations, not against the broad notion of "running an app on a blockchain." Second, this is one member of a continuation family, and the family's overall coverage is the union of what each issued patent claims, not what any single grant says in isolation. What can be stated plainly from the record is the narrow, useful fact: as of June 23, 2026, Nasdaq, Inc. holds a granted United States patent whose independent claims are directed to running a token-weighted, ownership-derived voting event against an asset register maintained on a distributed blockchain, classified squarely in the blockchain-payments corner of the CPC system.