Mobile County Probate Judges Appointment Procedures Amended

Alabama enacted HB576 amending Mobile County probate judge appointment procedures. The bill modifies how temporary judges of probate are appointed within the county. Sponsored by Rep. Chip Brown, the legislation passed unanimously through both chambers before being signed into law on April 6, 2026.

Tuscaloosa County sheriff compensation revised

Alabama enacted HB514 on April 6, 2026, revising sheriff compensation in Tuscaloosa County. Sponsored by Rep. Ron Bolton, the bill passed unanimously in both chambers with 61-0 in the House and 30-0 in the Senate. The legislation amends state law to adjust the pay structure for the Tuscaloosa County sheriff's position.

Alabama SB269 - Ground Ambulance Balance Billing Prohibition

Alabama enacted Senate Bill 269 prohibiting ground ambulance balance billing and establishing minimum reimbursement rates that health insurers must pay to emergency medical service providers. The legislation sponsored by Senator Bobby Singleton passed with strong bipartisan support, clearing the House 101-0 and the Senate 25-2. The bill affects health insurance companies operating in Alabama and EMS providers serving patients with commercial insurance coverage.

Chambers County City of Valley Annexation

Alabama enacted SB355 authorizing the annexation of certain territory into the City of Valley in Chambers County. The bill passed the Senate 33-0 and the House 102-4 before receiving the Governor's signature on April 6, 2026. This local legislation modifies municipal boundaries and jurisdictional responsibilities for the affected area.

Firefighters; Parkinson's Disease Occupational Disease Compensation

Alabama enacted HB466 on April 6, 2026, adding Parkinson's Disease to the list of occupational diseases compensable for death and disability for firefighters. The bill passed unanimously in both chambers (105-0 in House, 34-0 in Senate) after being sponsored by Rep. Allen Treadaway. This establishes a presumptive connection between firefighting duties and Parkinson's Disease for workers' compensation purposes.

Maintaining availability of critical information in a distributed storage network

USPTO granted patent US12596598B2 to Pure Storage, Inc. covering methods and apparatus for maintaining availability of critical information in distributed storage networks using dispersed storage error encoding. The patent protects technology for identifying, encoding, and distributing critical information across multiple storage units to ensure operational continuity.

System for data archival in a blockchain network and a method thereof

The USPTO granted patent US12596674B2 to National Payments Corporation of India for a blockchain data archival system. The invention enables archiver nodes and non-archiver nodes to maintain, query, and retrieve transaction data across a distributed blockchain network using specialized archival ledgers and data management modules.

Systolic Parallel Galois Hash Computing Device Patent Grant

USPTO granted Patent US12596530B2 to Secturion Systems, Inc. for a systolic parallel Galois hash computing device. The invention comprises multiple circuits processing data packets using multipliers and exclusive-OR gates to compute Galois hashes, applicable in FPGA and integrated circuit implementations. The patent includes 19 claims covering the hardware architecture for cryptographic hash operations in networking applications.

Cloud controller message broker, wireless WebSocket communications

USPTO granted patent US12596597B2 to Ruckus IP Holdings LLC on April 7, 2026. The patent covers HTTP-based message broker architectures enabling communications between cloud-based controllers and network devices of wireless communications networks via WebSocket tunnel connections. The patent includes 14 claims relating to cloud controller messaging systems and gRPC proxy acknowledgments.

Round trip time (RTT) measurement based upon sequence number

The USPTO granted Cisco Technology, Inc. Patent US12596568B2 covering systems and methods for measuring packet round trip time (RTT) in networks using sequence numbers. The patent describes determining expected ACK sequence numbers and comparing them with received sequence numbers to calculate network latency. Cisco is the assignee with six named inventors.