Patent trolls and bitcoin blockchain patents.

Question

This is a sensitive topic and will change a lot of the things in the cryptocurrency industry especially in 2017. Right now the use of open source software is being bombarded by patent trolls and bitcoin / blockchain is no exception. How do you think this will effect the use of Multichain? Will developers need to consider abandoning development on all blockchain projects since everything is being patented by big lawyer firms in preperation to exploit the industry and what kind of protection is there for companies who want to use blockchain to trade assets online? The idea of trading assets could be patented but how can such a broad industry have a valid patent against it. I was just reading a story about one lawyer firm filing lawsuits against using SSL on various domains because the idea of SSL was patented decades ago and almost everyone is in violation. We do believe that even the most rediculous aspects of blockchain will make patent trolls hungry for easy money. I do believe we need a better network of protection against this problem and all cryptography development needs protection for small and medium sized businesses from patent trolling.

Answer 1

It's an interesting question, but this is too big and complex a topic for us to address in a short answer in this forum. You should obviously take legal advice if it concerns you. There is a notion of "prior art" which is relevant here, and also the ability of open source products to provide protection against patents by their very nature, depending on the license used.

Comments

Sure I just wanted to open things up for discussion because I know many legitimate developers including multichain will eventually have to deal with the destructive forces of patent trolls. The community of blockchain and open source in general need to know there are organizations, groups and even insurance policies that will mitigate risks and provide an even playing ground and a hopeful future for distributed ledgers.