Does Blockchain Matter Yet In Intellectual Property For Business?

By: Jess Collen

Every day, startups and entrepreneurs are asking: What is all this talk about blockchain and how can I take advantage of it to protect my rights?  There is hope that blockchain might provide some alternative to the often-confusing and expensive traditional types of intellectual property protection. Blockchain’s potential for your business will differ, depending upon what type of intellectual property you are interested in protecting.

The three main pillars of intellectual property are patents, copyrights, and trademarks. The potential of blockchain, at the present time, varies for each of these.

For patent law, blockchain has probably been most noteworthy because of the influx of applications filed in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) to protect various uses of blockchain technology. But blockchain’s strength as an unchangeable, distributed ledger is ideally suited to compiling information and lists. While its tamper-proof code can provide solid evidence of facts about what invention may have been created, and when, the only way to get enforceable patent rights is by filing an application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, surviving the application (or “prosecution”) process, and having a federal patent issued in your name. That is the only way to get a legal monopoly. You can invent that “Next Great Thing,” but if you don’t patent your rights, it will be free for anyone to copy once it is out in public and you have exceeded the timetable to get a patent.

Blockchain is a great way to track all of the information regarding inventions, inventor names, ownership rights and other formalities. There are also evolving markets for patent pools, investor collaboration, and patent licensing. But nothing about blockchain technology at the moment will provide an alternative to patent protection for inventions. No patent, no monopoly.

Copyright protection is a bit different. First of all, because you can claim copyright ownership and gain copyright protectability even without federal registration, the system is more flexible than the patent system. Blockchain provides a great system for recording rights that are created in “original works of authorship,” which can be anything from a photograph to a book, to a website, to a doctoral thesis. It is very conceivable that an updated blockchain-secured distributed ledger could supplant the copyright system presently in use by the Copyright Office in Washington, D.C.  But for now, documenting your creation and first publication on blockchain will be more like improving your evidence, rather than securing any legal rights. To actually sue in court based upon copyright, you need to get a copyright registration (which you can do after the fact). The United States Copyright Office is sorely in need of an updated platform which would make it easy for the public to see exactly what is being protected by copyright law. Currently, you can find owner names, registration dates and titles in the Copyright Office online records. But samples of what is actually registered are not generally available without going to the Copyright Office in Washington, D.C.  So, as with all legal documents, proof of your underlying facts and claims can be critical. Using blockchain to document everything related to your copyrighted property may strongly improve your position, and make it easier to prove the rights which you own.

Read more >> https://www.forbes.com/sites/jesscollen/2019/02/21/does-blockchain-matter-yet-in-intellectual-property-for-business/#4d9b49541c21