Simplifying Intellectual Property with Blockchain Technology

By: Mary Hall

Lawyers, legal professionals and inventors have long struggled with the difficulties of processing patent applications and keeping up with the amount of patent filings via the patent database system. As a young lawyer, I spent many long hours doing patent and trademark searches.  If only the intellectual property records were on the digital ledger of blockchain I might have been able to save a considerable amount of time and research effort!

The Problem of Siloed Data and Intellectual Property
In common-law and many countries, the Patent and Trademark systems favor the first to file. This is a problem when the databases inventors file their applications on is backlogged and out of sync. It is estimated that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (UPTO) is currently backlogged by hundreds of thousands of patent applications with only a few thousand examiners reviewing them. Patents and Trademark applications can be filed in the USPTO systems, but not be immediately discoverable by others. Inventors and intellectual property holders may legitimately believe they are the first to file, but in actual fact there may be other applications filed before theirs which they simply can’t find in the government databases because they don’t show up yet in search. This is one of the reasons why many law firms tell clients that it will take them 2 to 3 weeks to do a thorough patent or trademark search.  They know if may take time for intellectual property filings to be discoverable in the traditional database systems. According to the Erikson Law Group, “ The average time it takes to obtain a patent from the patent office at this time is about 32 months or a little under 3 years.”[1]

Read more >> https://blogs.oracle.com/blockchain/simplifying-intellectual-property-with-blockchain-technology