Bonum Certa Men Certa

Blockchain and Bitcoin Patents Help Demonstrate How Software Patents Get Used by Giants to Crush Emerging Technologies ('Threats')

BitcoinSummary: Innovations associated with Bitcoin/Blockchain -- advancements which are largely Free/Open Source software-centric -- are under threat from financial giants that effectively besiege/threaten startups using a barrage of software patents

THE USPTO insists that it makes the US more competitive, but in many cases it actually helps large companies undermine small ones, not foreign ones.



Case of point: see the new article "When a patent-happy industry meets open-source technology" [1, 2]. To quote from the article:

When the financial services industry started paying attention to blockchain technology, many companies, seemingly as a reflex, sought patent protection for their ideas.

It was ironic, since the original bitcoin blockchain was a breakthrough of open-source development, in which software code is made freely available for anyone to use or modify. As the industry has gained a clearer understanding of how distributed-ledger technology could change its business, it's begun to see the merits of such openness in supporting collaborative innovation, and the limitations of the traditional, you-can't-touch-this approach.

Some are even using a hybrid strategy, pursuing patents to secure a competitive advantage – or at least protect themselves from legal challenges – while publishing code and inviting others to improve it by submitting fixes or patching bugs. The situation underscores the cultural differences between the banking and technology fields as the former looks to the latter for help meeting the demands of an increasingly digital world.


IBM's Manny Schecter was interested in this and Benjamin Henrion told him that these conglomerates pursuing patents on Blockchain technologies is "like oil companies patenting everything solar."

This isn't entirely new a revelation. It's an old trick in many industries (absorbing or denying competition that suggests alternative paradigms). Big Banks are essentially attacking Bitcoin, Blockchain etc. using software patents and today we found two more articles about it, "Blockchain patent filings by Goldman, others tip future cost risk" and "Corporate Patents on Blockchain Could Create Legal Problems for Startups". Well, that’s the intention.

"Thankfully, a lot of software patents pertaining to payments and finance are being invalidated these days (thrown our by court), more so than in any other field.""Over the past few months," one of these articles says, "some of the world’s largest financial companies including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Mastercard – have been patenting promising Blockchain methodologies. Despite a common perception that Blockchain is Open Source and developers can freely use Sotoshi Nakamoto’s ideas from bitcoin to build new systems, it still could mean costly legal problems for fledgling startups, lawyers and others are saying."

We wrote about this not too long ago in relation to MasterCard. A lot of the above culminated in the publication of "Big Banks Are Stocking Up on Blockchain Patents" (early yesterday in Wall Street media). To quote:

In the headlong rush to revolutionize modern finance, blockchain enthusiasts are overlooking one potentially costly problem: their applications, built on open-source code, may actually belong to someone else.

Recently, some of the biggest names in business, from Goldman Sachs to Bank of America and Mastercard, have quietly patented some of the most promising blockchain technologies for themselves. Through mid-November, the number of patents that companies have obtained or said they’ve applied for has roughly doubled since the start of the year, according to law firm Reed Smith.


Our readers are smart enough to know what's wrong with this picture. Gullible people may try to frame this as a sign of "adoption" and "success", but the large financial firms just want to guard their monopoly/oligopoly, they don't want disruption.

Thankfully, a lot of software patents pertaining to payments and finance are being invalidated these days (thrown out by courts), more so than in any other field (about 90% of the time). That's similar to business methods, too.

Are patent examiners in the US paying any attention at all to what courts have been arguing over and over again?

Recent Techrights' Posts

Open Source Initiative (OSI) Privacy Fiasco in Detail: The OSI Does Not Respect Anybody's Privacy
The surveillance mafia that bans dissent or key people (even co-founders) with dissenting views
The LLM Bubble is About to Implode, Gimmicks and Financial Shell Games Cannot Prevent That, Only Delay It
To inflate the bubble MElon is now doing the classic trick of buying from oneself for a fictional value
 
LLM Slop Piggybacking News About GNU/Linux and Distorting It
new examples
Links 31/03/2025: Press and Democracy Under Further Attacks in the US, Attitudes Towards Slop Sour
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/03/2025: More X-Filesposting and Dreaming in Emacs
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 30, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, March 30, 2025
Links 30/03/2025: Security Breaches, Crackdowns on Dissent/Rival Politicians
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/03/2025: London Soundtrack Festival, Superbloom, gmiCAPTCHA
Links for the day
Phasing Out Vista 10 in Nations Where ~90% of Windows Users Still Rely on It
Recipe for another Microsoft disaster
The Cost of Pursuing the Much-Needed Reform/Shield Against Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs)
“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.”
Links 30/03/2025: Contagious Ideas, Signal Leak, and Squashing Lousy Patents
Links for the day
Links 30/03/2025: "Quantum Randomness" and "F-1 Visa Revoked" in US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/03/2025: US as a Threat, Returning to the WWW
Links for the day
Links 30/03/2025: Judge Blocks Dismantling Of VOA, Turkey Arrested Many Journalists
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 29, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, March 29, 2025
Judges Would Never Rule for Men Who Strangle Women or Against Women Who Merely Wrote Articles About Abuse They Had Received From Men
We don't intend to do "trial by media", so we won't be disclosing claims and defences until it's over
Windows is an Unnatural Disaster, It is Also Avoidable
there's a wide window of opportunity opening
Gemini Links 29/03/2025: Less YouTube and More Station
Links for the day
In Some Countries, Such as Thailand, Firefox is Already Measured at Less Than 2% (One Day Firefox Will Get Blocked, Not Only Lack Support)
Web consolidation around Chrom-isms will doom the Web as we know it
Killing the News With Spam and Slop Benefits Those Whose Desire is an Uninformed Population
adoption of Free software depends indirectly on political activities/activism
Links 29/03/2025: Trademarks Battles, Fires Destroy More Than 3,000 South Korean Homes
Links for the day
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Privacy Fiasco in Detail: An Introduction
Perhaps tomorrow or perhaps next week we'll share more information about what happened and what was reported to the California Privacy Protection Agency
Links 29/03/2025: More Crackdowns on Science, "Hey Hi" Slopping is Flopping
Links for the day
IBM's BS (Bait, Switch) Regarding Ways to Stay Onboard
PIPs, RTOs, and forced relocations are just an illusion of choice (or ability to recover)
Costa Rica Almost Bankrupt Because of Microsoft
the incidents in Costa Rica are Windows incidents
Gemini Links 29/03/2025: Art of Looking, Wireguard, EMacs
Links for the day
Links 29/03/2025: Attacks on Social Security and War Updates
Links for the day
Banned evidence: Ars Technica forums censored email predicting DebConf23 death, Abraham Raji & Debian cover-up
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 28, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, March 28, 2025