US 2017/0286093 A1Published application

Blocking and non-blocking firmware update

AssigneeSquare, Inc.

InventorsRodion Steshenko, Jianliang Zhao, Timothy Kordas

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

Loading patent…

Abstract

A payment service system may include a server that manages firmware updates for payment devices such as payment readers. A payment reader may access a firmware manifest including a listing of current firmware assets stored at the payment reader, and send the firmware manifest to the server. The server may compare the firmware manifest to available firmware bundles, which are ordered combinations of firmware assets that have been released for usage by payment readers. Some of the bundles may be blocking bundles, while some are non-blocking. If a payment reader is to be updated with a blocking bundle, it cannot process payments during the update. If the update is not a blocking bundle, the payment reader may continue to process payments.

Claims30

Dependent claims

A method of providing a firmware update from a payment server to a payment reader, the method comprising:

requesting, from a merchant device running a point-of-sale application, a firmware manifest from the payment reader;
accessing, at the payment reader, the firmware manifest, wherein the firmware manifest includes a firmware version for each of a plurality of firmware assets, and wherein each firmware asset includes instructions for operating a component of the payment reader;
transmitting, from the payment reader via the merchant device, the firmware manifest to the payment server;
accessing, at the payment server, a plurality of firmware bundles, wherein each firmware bundle comprises an ordered listing of permitted combinations of firmware versions for the plurality of firmware assets;
determining, at the payment server, whether the firmware versions of the firmware manifest are a permissible combination of firmware versions, comprising:
comparing an ordered listing of the firmware versions of the firmware manifest to one or more of the firmware bundles;
identifying the firmware versions of the firmware manifest as a permissible combination if the ordered listing for the firmware manifest matches one of the firmware bundles;
and
identifying the firmware versions of the firmware manifest as a permissible combination if the ordered listing for the firmware manifest corresponds to a transition state between two firmware bundles;
identifying, at the payment server, a firmware update for one of the firmware assets, wherein identifying the firmware update comprises:
identifying an update firmware bundle of the plurality of firmware bundles;
comparing, in order, firmware versions of the ordered listing for the firmware manifest to corresponding firmware versions for the update firmware bundle;
and
identifying the firmware update based on the first firmware version of the ordered listing for the firmware manifest that does not match the corresponding firmware version of the update firmware bundle;
generating, at the payment server, a parallel processing indicator;
transmitting, from the payment server, the firmware update and the parallel processing indicator;
receiving, at the payment reader via the merchant device, the firmware update and the parallel processing indicator;
receiving, at the payment reader, a request to process a payment;
processing the payment at the payment reader if the parallel processing indicator indicates that the payments may be processed during the firmware update;
updating, at the payment reader, the firmware asset that is associated with the firmware update.

17 more elements

A method of providing a firmware update from a server, the method comprising:

receiving, at the server, a firmware manifest for a device, wherein the firmware manifest includes a firmware version for each of a plurality of firmware assets of the device;
accessing, at the server, a plurality of firmware bundles, wherein each firmware bundle comprises an ordered listing of permitted combinations of firmware versions for the plurality of firmware assets;
comparing, at the server, an ordered listing of the firmware versions of the firmware manifest with one or more of the firmware bundles;
determining, at the server, whether the firmware versions of the firmware manifest are a permissible combination of firmware versions;
identifying, at the server, an update firmware bundle of the plurality of firmware bundles;
generating, at the server, a firmware update based on the update firmware bundle and the firmware manifest;
determining, at the server, whether the update firmware bundle is a blocking firmware bundle;
generating, at the server, a parallel processing indicator based on the firmware manifest or the update firmware bundle, wherein the parallel processing indicator indicates whether parallel processing should continue at the device during the firmware update;
and
transmitting, from the server, the firmware update and the parallel processing indicator.

7 more elements

A server, comprising:

a communication interface configured to receive a firmware manifest from a device, transmit a parallel processing indicator to the device, and transmit a firmware update to the device;
one or more memories comprising firmware update instructions and information relating to a plurality of firmware bundles, wherein each firmware bundle comprises an ordered listing of permitted combinations of firmware versions for the plurality of firmware assets;
a processing unit configured to execute the firmware update instructions, to receive the firmware manifest, and access the information relating to the plurality of firmware bundles, wherein the processing unit is configured to compare an ordered listing of the firmware versions of the firmware manifest with one or more of the firmware bundles, determine whether the firmware versions of the firmware manifest are a permissible combination of firmware versions, identify an update firmware bundle of the plurality of firmware bundles, generate a firmware update based on the update firmware bundle and the firmware manifest, determine whether the update firmware bundle is a blocking firmware bundle, generate a parallel processing indicator based on the firmware manifest or the update firmware bundle, and provide the firmware update and the parallel processing indicator to the communication interface, wherein the parallel processing indicator indicates whether parallel processing should continue at the device during the firmware update.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions stored therein, which when executed by one or more processors of a server, cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising:

accessing a plurality of firmware bundles, wherein each firmware bundle comprises an ordered listing of permitted combinations of firmware versions for a plurality of firmware assets;
comparing an ordered listing of the firmware versions of the firmware manifest with one or more of the firmware bundles;
determining whether the firmware versions of the firmware manifest are a permissible combination of firmware versions;
identifying an update firmware bundle of the plurality of firmware bundles;
generating a firmware update based on the update firmware bundle and the firmware manifest;
determining whether the update firmware bundle is a blocking firmware bundle;
generating a parallel processing indicator based on the firmware manifest or the update firmware bundle, wherein the parallel processing indicator indicates whether parallel processing should continue at the device during the firmware update;
and
providing the firmware update and the parallel processing indicator.

6 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 15/086,025Filed 30 Mar 2016
Published: 5 Oct 2017
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification13 codes

G06F 8/658
Updates: incremental updates; Differential updates
G06F 8/71
Software maintenance or management: version control ; Configuration management
G06Q 20/20
Payment architectures: point-of-sale [POS] network systems
G06Q 20/352
Using cards, e.g. integrated circuit [IC] cards or magnetic cards: contactless payments by cards

Family

US 10,108,412 B2Related patent
US 2017/0286093 A1This patent

From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.

Timeline

Citations

Open elsewhere

Building an agent or pulling many patents? Use the API or MCP server instead of scraping pages. Get an API key