Kaspersky registered several patents with the US patent office. Most of them are targeted to increase the speed (most of the readers know that this is a favorite topic of mine). But also new approaches on finding rootkits. Overall none of the patents is really new, according to AV-TEST, a website that tests antivirus solutions.
Here is one of the patents:
http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%252Fnetahtml%252FPTO%252Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7392544.PN.&OS=PN/7392544
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