2 hours ago
The Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance (COPA) has joined forces with Unified Patents to protect the crypto assemblage from patent trolls, launching a caller Blockchain Zone aimed astatine challenging patents held by non-practicing entities (NPEs) that could endanger the open-source ecosystem.
According to Unified Patents, this inaugural seeks to deter NPE enactment successful the crypto sector, wherever specified entities relationship for 58% of each US patent litigation.
Paul Grewal, Chief Legal Officer astatine Coinbase and a subordinate of COPA, emphasized the value of this collaboration, saying:
“Patent trolls are barriers successful the way of innovation; they hinder the advancement of exertion and stifle the tone of creativity, peculiarly successful the fast-evolving satellite of cryptocurrency. They indispensable beryllium stopped truthful that the assemblage tin proceed to bash the important concern of gathering the crypto-economy.”
The concern offers COPA members pass-through extortion astatine nary cost, enhancing their quality to innovate without the looming menace of unwarranted litigation. Steve Lee, Lead astatine Spiral — a subsidiary of Block and different COPA subordinate — said:
“COPA has fought agelong and hard to trim barriers to crypto innovation, including its efforts to debunk mendacious IP claims related to Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity, which person plagued the Bitcoin community. Now, we instrumentality COPA’s enactment a measurement further to support the crypto assemblage from patent trolls.”
Unified Patents’ existing Transactions Zone has already challenged hundreds of patents that threatened related technologies. The recently established Blockchain Zone volition widen these efforts to the blockchain industry, ensuring that blockchain technologies stay unfastened and escaped from baseless assertions.
In March, the UK High Court ruled against Craig Wright successful a lawsuit brought by COPA, declaring that helium is not Satoshi Nakamoto and did not make Bitcoin.
Justice Mellor recovered that Wright had “lied to the Court extensively and repeatedly” and engaged successful “the deliberate accumulation of mendacious documents to enactment mendacious claims.” The determination undermined respective of Wright’s different ineligible claims that relied connected his asserted individuality arsenic Bitcoin’s creator.
By joining implicit 300 companies committed to deterring invalid patent assertions by NPEs, COPA and Unified Patents purpose to foster an situation wherever developers tin innovate freely. Unified Patents remains the lone entity that deters invalid patent assertions without ever paying NPEs, thereby avoiding incentivizing further NPE activity.
Kevin Jakel, laminitis and CEO of Unified Patents, expressed optimism astir the partnership, stating:
“We’re blessed to spouse with COPA to bring our unsocial solution to the blockchain community. It represents a fantastic accidental to guarantee that the exertion remains escaped to turn businesses, trim transaction costs, and ensures it won’t beryllium hindered by the all-too-common baseless patent assertions affecting different sectors of the economy.”
The collaboration betwixt COPA and Unified Patents represents a proactive attack to safeguarding innovation wrong the industry. By challenging questionable patents and deterring patent trolls, they question to guarantee that blockchain exertion tin make unimpeded, benefiting the full crypto community.
The station COPA takes connected combat against ‘patent trolls’ to support unfastened root developers aft Wright win appeared archetypal connected CryptoSlate.
English (US) 