Patent | Patent Troll | Using Blockchain for Patenting
It is a legal form for restricting our intellectual property from making, using, or selling by patent trollers. Startups have limited resources, patent protection blocks larger corporations from copying their innovations, and then putting those startups out of business.
This episode in series silicon valley where pied piper faced patent troll. A patent troll uses patents as legal weapons, instead of actually creating any new products or coming up with new ideas.
But obtaining patents is expensive and can be speculative. Software innovation changes fast. A brilliant invention might soon be obsolete. There is a more communal approach. Innovators can share their innovations and replace the time and energy spent filing patent applications with an increased effort at research, and development. The community would contribute to a database of filed patent applications. Anyone can check to see what’s been published in a given field to avoid directing resources on the same subject matter. The US Patent and Trademark Office wait 18 months to publish applications. Companies could join the community to share applications much sooner. Contributors might lose some strategic advantage, but the overall ecosystem could benefit by not duplicating efforts.
What if Satoshi Nakamoto had filed for and been issued a patent for the basic concept of Bitcoin, and thus the blockchain? It would be broad enough to encompass pretty much any application in the various blockchain business models, stifling innovation.
Using Blockchain for Patenting
Using a blockchain for patent pools help streamline licensing, negotiation, and enforcement. Automated review systems become more feasible. High-fidelity tracking of changes is built-in, and it provides a testing bed for non-blockchain industries to move their pools to a blockchain system. But participation is crucial to ensure the success of the blockchain essential patent pool. Voluntary communal coordination can also take place off-blockchain. Individual companies don’t have to share intellectual property, but community members could provide incentives for sharing. Companies could follow policies protecting some of their core intellectual property without being selfish. This approach would start with education. Industry leaders could agree upon a framework of suggested policies to share throughout the industry. Companies could be encouraged to publish open source blocking patents to the community. So blockchain-based technologies, and non-competing businesses wouldn’t be blocked.
No patent troll could attempt to monopolize the discovery. Voluntary publication already happens to some degree in the blockchain space. GitHub has thousands of blockchain-related repositories. Not every repository holds innovative code, but the sheer volume indicates immense interest in the technology. The community would need to urge companies holding blockchain patents to make them unenforceable or agree to offer royalty-free licenses. This would align with the motivations of companies using patents mainly to defend against patent trolls.