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American financial services giant Mastercard was granted a patent for a method to partition a blockchain on October 9, so that it can store multiple transaction types and formats. This means the network could gather and accept information from various computing devices regardless of size and format. Mastercard first applied for the above mentioned patent back in July 2016, it takes up to 18 months for the patent office to  publishes applications, and it can take years to decide whether to grant patent protection. Mastercard is the third largest with a hefty 80 patent filings, which makes it a key participant of the potentially forthcoming patent war in the field of blockchain.

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/why-mastercards-multi-blockchain-might-be-a-new-step-in-the-patent-race