Chris Mammen, Partner in our San Francisco office, recently interviewed Berkeley Law professors Narechania and McCrary about some of the IP applications of blockchain. This short video touches upon the following points:
- What is blockchain?
- Does it have broader applications outside Finance?
- Who is the inventor and why is his/her/their identity important?
- How might ownership of a core set of blockchain patents play out in IP terms?
- Is there a public interest element to patent ownership here and might the “open source” ethos be embraced?
- Improvement inventions, patentable subject matter and inventiveness questions in the context of bringing claims
- Who is active in the patenting space of blockchain?
- Economic perspective of blockchain innovation vs. patent law perspective
- What is the relevance here of the Supreme Court’s Alice patentability decision?
- The defensive approach in the context of improvement patents and encouragement/discouragement of innovation.