Transcript
Into the Patentverse: Web 3.0, blockchain, cryptocurrency, and NFTs.
The following is a computer-generated transcript from the Patently Strategic Podcast. The results aren't always perfect, but we will continue working on improving the quality of the automation.
WEBVTT
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Good day and welcome to the Patently Strategic Podcast, where we discuss all things at
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the intersection of business, technology, and patents. This podcast
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is a monthly discussion amongst experts in the field of patenting. It is for inventors,
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founders and IP professionals alike, established or aspiring.
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In today's episode, our experts take on the future of the Web
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Metaverse. It's the buzziest of the buzzwords in tech today,
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and will soon be joining the ranks of AI and ML as requisite keywords
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in the next generation of pitch decks and patent applications.
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But what are the core components of the Metaverse, and what are their implications
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in the world of intellectual property? The Patently Strategic Podcast will
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be exploring this topic over the course of several upcoming episodes,
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but we begin our journey today with Web 30,
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the third major iteration of the Internet. While it may prove to be the
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next great tech revolution, the broad shape and definition of the Metaverse itself
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is still more firmly baked in science fiction than in commercial tech
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reality. Many of its core building blocks, however, are likely right
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in front of our eyes or headsets. Perhaps history
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shows that most major technology revolutions are rarely leaps,
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but instead evolutionary products of incremental steps composed
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of many existing building blocks met with market readiness. The Web
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30 innovations of blockchain, cryptocurrency, and NFTs
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that are taking shape in front of us will no doubt be among these essential
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building blocks. With an ability to touch both our physical and virtual worlds,
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cryptocurrencies could form the monetary basis for all economic activity
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in the Metaverse NFTs make it possible for unique items to
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exist and assets to be exclusively owned in the digital realm.
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The very foundations and infrastructure for the Metaverse in its virtual worlds
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could be built on blockchain technology.
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Perhaps the Metaverse is simply how we experience the third major phase of
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the web. Or maybe in its purest, most decentralized form, the Metaverse
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is built entirely on top of it. In any case, it's hard to imagine a
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future where the two are not inextricably linked.
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This third phase of the Internet also poses some of the most interesting questions
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for the world of intellectual property. What will the impact be on digital property rights
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in a secure marketplace governed by smart contracts? How will copyrights
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play in digital worlds with their own art and governance? Is there merit in considering
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a new type of protection category outside of patents and copyrights?
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In our very first IP Watchdog episode, Kristen Hansen,
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patent strategist and software patent guru here in Aurora,
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leads a discussion along with our all star patent panel, digging into the
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fundamentals of blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs and why the hype the
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current state of the technology. Questions around what Web evolution,
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blockchain and NFT technology means for IP ownership,
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and critical strategies for protecting blockchain and cryptocurrency
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innovations. The first half hour of this episode is the best, most succinct
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understandable overview I've personally heard on blockchain,
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crypto, N FTS, and the evolution of the web. What follows
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is a wonderful conversation around potential IP world impacts and
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some very practical tips on drafting strategies and working with inventors
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who are innovating in these spaces. Kristen is also joined
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today by our always exceptional group of IP experts,
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including Dr. Ashley Sloat, President and director of
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patent strategy here at Aurora, David Jackrel, President of
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Jackrel Consulting, Shelley Couturier, patent strategist and search specialist,
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and Daniel Wright, patent strategist. And one final administrative note
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before joining the panel, we're hiring. If you'd like to join our growing team
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and participate in great conversations like these, go to aurorapetance.
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Comcareers to learn more and apply. We'll also include that
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link in the show notes. All right, without further Ado,
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take it away, crypto crew. All right. And we'll let
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Kristen take it away and educate us
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on okay, perfect. All this good stuff,
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highly relevant. Hot topic. Every time I turn on the business
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news or whatever, it's talking about my
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tanked, crypto.
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What's the future? Well, I'm hoping to do
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a little bit of a tutorial, too, because some of this stuff I knew,
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but there were so many things that I went, oh, I had no idea.
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I thought this group might appreciate that having you go in
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and out of software or you don't do software full time, it's kind
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of nice to get a quick primer. Absolutely.
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Okay. So the overview that I'm going to go through,
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blockchain and cryptocurrency, why so much hype? We'll talk
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about the state of the technology, and we'll talk about protecting these types of innovations.
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So why are you seeing all this cryptocurrency and
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blockchain tech out there in the last few years? And the short
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answer is actually trust and trust
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issues with digital money have really been overcome.
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And the long answer to that is they've overcome using blockchain
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because blockchain actually gives you a cryptographic
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way to store and use and access data. And so
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I will go into what each is and how they interact.
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But basically, digital currency has been
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just distrusted. It has not had a very centralized
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way or view. And with blockchain, it can have that now.
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And so all you've seen is cryptocurrency,
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cryptocurrency, cryptocurrency. And nobody really knows
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exactly how it works or what it is, but they want it.
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Like I said, it's very secure. It's decentralized.
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There's really no third party meddling here. It's not
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underwritten like the Department of treasury, gold and
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cash, just a different exchange. And the
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decentralization of this means no government, no banks,
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no data providers, no Facebook and Google in your inbox or
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in your business. I think there will be ways
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that these companies will glam onto these technologies and offer kind
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of a hybrid model, but we haven't seen that yet.
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Where you have it's convenient to have Google provide you
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this, but Google is not going to look at certain things, even though
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they say that they're not looking. They may in
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other realms with these realms, you may get something a little more semi
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private than you have today.
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And then identity masking it actually is a way
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to perform things in the digital
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money world without really showing
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your identity. You're not a user who has an account at
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a bank with a name and a Social Security number. This is really different.
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This is more like an on screen username that
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you came up with is tied to sudo sort
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of account number. And it couldn't be tied to a wallet
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that knows a little bit more about you. But none of those things
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are connected in a way that shares data. That way
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they're kind of siloed. So that can be good and bad, of course.
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Right. If you mask your identity, you might have some government problems,
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tax problems. You might be hiding drug money. Right.
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So overall, what is blockchain? Blockchain tech
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actually allows multiple parties to transact in a peer to peer manner.
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And this is truly without a third party
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bank or government or company entity overseeing that peer
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to peer network. If you have an email account that is owned by Google,
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Google can oversee all of that. They try not to look into that.
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They don't capture that data appropriately and
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mine it because it's your personal email. You're using
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your quotes, right? I am.
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Because they have access to it. What they're doing with it,
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they're not telling us. Right, right. And that's
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all the cost of doing business as a consumer
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who wants ease of use. Right. I want Google to set this up for me.
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I want Facebook to set this up for me because I don't have the
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time to figure it out myself. I just want the account and I just want
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to do the things associated with the account. And that's very traditional
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and it's very consumer forward and convenient.
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But there are some issues with that pop up and blockchain
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is a way to solve some of those issues
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by decentralizing that account entirely
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by it's immutable, which basically means it's unchangeable
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over time. If you do a transaction, you can't undo that
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transaction. If you pay somebody cryptocurrency using
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a blockchain technology, it gets time stamped
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and logged in the blockchain. And to
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undo that, that person has to pay you back in
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yet another transaction which gets verified and timestamp
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and put in the blockchain. But you cannot modify and
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change that blockchain by removing it's just additive.
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That's very interesting from
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a security standpoint, because that means in
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order to actually hack that,
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if you're going to change one block in the chain,
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everyone else in there would immediately know that that had been tampered with
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because you're passing these chains around in order to verify
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transactions. And so if hackers wanted to actually corrupt a
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blockchain system, they would actually need to change every block in the chain and
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change that across all the distributed versions of that chain,
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because one piece of blockchain is let's look
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at the network of people. Let's create a ledger.
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Let's use a hash to let people connect to that ledger, and let's
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log in that ledger everything that goes on. And in order to approve
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everything that goes on in that ledger, we want some sort of unanimous or some
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sort of quorum amongst our members that say this can happen.
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And so because of that quorum and that distribution,
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this is super secure. The other piece of
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this is blockchain is programmable. And that
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means it's actually got programs stored within
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the blockchain that execute basically when
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predetermined conditions are met. So you can imagine that there's
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probably a lot of inventions coming down the pike about that. Where I
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have an algorithm. It runs this way. Oh, by the way, I put it in
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the blockchain. Right. So that makes it kind of patentably interesting
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until it doesn't. Right. Until everyone's doing that. Like AI
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and ML. Yes.
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There's a unanimousness to this. Like I indicated,
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all network participants really agree to the validity of each record
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in the blockchain. And I can get into this later. But part
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of what that looks like is proof of work. And if
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I'm confirming that particular things and I
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don't have to confirm it as a user, but my account would confirm it by
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automatic comparison. So if I'm participating in that
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unanimous checking process, I can get paid by proof
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of work, which is just a minor little amount.
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But it means that I am part of the network. I am approving in
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the network, and I am continuing
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to use the network.
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The other part of this, I think I called this out as well.
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It's distributed. So this is a digital ledger technology.
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And a digital ledger technology can be anything from an Excel file
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to a list of cryptographically curated
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data. And the way they use this and distribute this
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is interesting because it really does go to every member of the network,
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every peer in the peer to peer network. Right. And they
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do that instead of passing this upward to a Google
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or a Facebook or a Twitter to verify things.
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And the other thing is anonymous. Like I said, they don't know your
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identity. Your username can be some pseudonym.
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It does not have to be you as a person. It could also be
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personas. Right. So maybe I have a work persona and
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a life persona. Right. This is my
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personal email and this is my work email. And they both have different personas
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when I access blockchain services.
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Okay. In that same vein, what is cryptocurrency?
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So cryptocurrency is also decentralized in that it uses
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blockchain and it does pass around kind
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of the idea of, is this okay to make this transaction?
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Can I transfer this to this person?
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Are they trustworthy? Are they able to
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confirm that they are part of this network and that they have an account or
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they have a digital wallet, right. And so you've seen
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these, I put it just a quick flip up there. Litecoin Ethereum
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coin, Bitcoin, ripple coin. There's many more.
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But in the end, cryptocurrency is data with a
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value and an address. It is no more than that.
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It has a financial value because of how that it
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was set up. But it's data with a value and an address.
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Transactions completed using crypto are maintained
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in a public ledger. So a blockchain.
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And because of that, they're super secure. They are checked and
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rechecked and they are very hard to hack. So the
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issue with people saying, oh, it's fake currency and it's
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really not like the same as cash or the underwritten gold of
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the US Treasury, that is true.
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But it has a different way of being
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confirmed in a different way of being restauranty. And it's
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just a different exchange mechanism. So as soon as we start to
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see it that way and see it used for certain industries that way,
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it may become a little bit more mainstream and understood
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in what we are doing. But as a side,
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in order to get cryptocurrency, you have to have a digital wallet.
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And in order to get cryptocurrency in that digital wallet,
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you actually use real money. Okay. So you can purchase cryptocurrency
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mining, though, for a while, too. I know how common that is now.
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But there was mining, though, too, right? Yes. You can buy certain equipment
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and it would essentially mine Bitcoin
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or whatever. Yes. So the other piece of that mining that
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Ashley says that could be from actively
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mining something and problem solving to get paid in
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tokens or in cryptocurrency coins.
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And another piece of that mining could be if
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I'm going to confirm what's going on in
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the ledger itself, maybe I'm going to solve a small
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puzzle piece and then for solving that,
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I will get paid a small rate, a pittance of
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crypto coin for doing that. So there's other
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ways to make money. But truly, if you want to trade it or you
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want to do something in large value, you usually exchange
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real money into cryptocurrency and it's in the stock
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market. So it can change the value can change just
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like real money and then
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financial transactions performed without the help of a third party. So again, no banks,
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no government. If you're using an application,
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it's really not a company
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owned application for the purpose of owning what you are using it for.
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So they don't own your crypto. They don't own your money, right.
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They don't own anything that means money.
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So we'll cover it in a second. But NFT would be
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kind of a version of cryptocurrency that isn't
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financial per se.
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So cryptocurrency features, you can imagine the pros or the secure
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transactions. No permission needed to use. You just download an app and
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you're able to use it. Get a wallet. Right.
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They're fast. They're like under two minutes beginning
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to end anywhere in the world. The locations of the participants
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is just completely irrelevant. You can do this with anyone in the world.
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Your identity can be hidden in the same way and there is no
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physical form. It is all virtual and no central banking system.
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And some of these are kind of as of yet. I can see maybe
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we would get some hybrids out there in the future, but this
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is how it works today.
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And of course cons, they're completely irreversible.
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You do get one kind of trigger that says,
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Are you sure? Right, if you want to create this transaction or perform
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this transaction. But once you've done that, they're irreversible.
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And like I said, you have to get that other person to pay you back.
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If you've purchased something and you want the money back, that sort of thing.
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There is a public transparency of the transaction details and
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it isn't in full and it isn't easily kind of discerned.
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A distributed ledger is public. It usually is just printed
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up to a server and it is publicly viewable
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and readable. But the beauty of it is you can't access it and do anything
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with it without the hash, which is just a piece,
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just a key that you can access the network itself with
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and without the trust of the network. So even though you can see numbers and
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data and things, you don't see what the transactions mean and what they
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actually did, it's just stored cryptographically, stored data,
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I guess. But if somebody could get
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a hold of that and figure out what you were doing with a lot of
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effort, they may be able to get in there
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and act like they are part of
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the network itself and that they are
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looking to provide pieces to the consensus.
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And if they do it in a way that is against three quarters
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of the people there, they might influence outcomes. So if they put
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in there, I don't trust this transaction nine times a day.
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They might be blocking transactions that are true and good, but they're
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blocking them from occurring, which could be a problem, right?
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You're blocking payments from happening. You're blocking transactions
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from occurring like they should. There are ways to influence
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networks like that as being part of the network and being just a malicious
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actor. And you can do that by seeing
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this public piece and guessing at what it
18:41.004 --> 18:44.458
would be for who's using it, and then trying to be part of that
18:44.484 --> 18:48.154
group. So there's a lot of theft of
18:48.192 --> 18:52.346
identity and just distrust
18:52.418 --> 18:55.922
involved there with anybody new coming in. And that's
18:55.946 --> 18:58.906
why there's all these checks, to make sure people are part of the system,
18:58.968 --> 19:02.278
that they are appropriately vetted and that
19:02.304 --> 19:05.520
they have the correct hash keys, anything, right.
19:06.870 --> 19:10.274
And then the other piece of user base behavior, the tracing
19:10.322 --> 19:13.510
and tracking, it's kind of difficult and it could be
19:13.620 --> 19:17.002
a Con. Just if there's theft, if there
19:17.016 --> 19:20.578
are problems going on, tax evasion, things like
19:20.604 --> 19:24.374
that. And by the way, if you make money in cryptocurrency,
19:24.422 --> 19:27.600
you do need to put that on your tax form.
19:27.990 --> 19:31.200
Well, I don't think there's any problem with that right now.
19:32.070 --> 19:34.140
Yeah, nobody's making any money.
19:35.850 --> 19:38.698
Okay. And I alluded to this a little bit, but here's a picture graph that
19:38.724 --> 19:42.430
just helps show you how changes are made on a blockchain.
19:43.170 --> 19:46.678
So at the far left person a wants to make
19:46.704 --> 19:50.230
a change to the blockchain. They create that change,
19:50.340 --> 19:54.062
they use the hash to do it, and this change will create a new block.
19:54.206 --> 19:57.758
This block is actually broadcast all the computers on the distributed network
19:57.794 --> 20:01.438
from peer to peer there. And those computers approve or disapprove the
20:01.464 --> 20:04.654
change if it's unanimous or if it's set up to be
20:04.752 --> 20:08.662
a consensus rules where you have a
20:08.676 --> 20:11.398
good majority or whatnot, depending on how it's set up,
20:11.544 --> 20:15.142
they approve it, and then the new block is actually added to
20:15.156 --> 20:19.478
the chain and it's permanent. So it's really straightforward.
20:19.634 --> 20:22.690
It's very clear on how this happens,
20:22.860 --> 20:26.326
where you will get lost when you get an inventor reading this stuff to you
20:26.388 --> 20:30.158
is in the data and in all of the rigmarole
20:30.194 --> 20:33.514
that goes into the cryptography and the back and forth going
20:33.552 --> 20:35.962
on, it's usually not clear.
20:36.156 --> 20:39.478
So when I pull inventions like this, and I've only done three
20:39.504 --> 20:43.042
or four myself, but I have been very motivated to
20:43.056 --> 20:46.558
say, let's go through a flow chart, let's do
20:46.584 --> 20:50.218
a transaction. What happens in your system so that I can see
20:50.364 --> 20:53.758
if it's different than a typical blockchain system and so that
20:53.784 --> 20:57.058
I can see where each piece of data is
20:57.144 --> 21:00.754
being used and how much importance put
21:00.792 --> 21:04.042
on it. Because if it's just a hash, it's just a
21:04.056 --> 21:07.874
hash. And if you haven't created any interesting data structure
21:07.922 --> 21:11.402
that's new in the industry, I don't care. We'll just call it a hash
21:11.426 --> 21:15.358
and be done with it. But if there's something new about it, it's another piece
21:15.384 --> 21:19.078
of invention that we have to dig into. So by making them
21:19.104 --> 21:22.198
go through a flow chart themselves and go
21:22.224 --> 21:25.920
through one transaction manually, it helps that process.
21:29.430 --> 21:33.214
One of the applications I had written years ago ended up with so
21:33.312 --> 21:37.082
many figures in it, just showing how the data moved
21:37.106 --> 21:40.958
around. And it was 2019.
21:41.054 --> 21:44.446
So it wasn't brand new crypto and blockchain tech,
21:44.508 --> 21:48.360
but it was newer and newish. So we didn't know
21:48.690 --> 21:52.294
what would be interesting and what would be patentable and what was
21:52.332 --> 21:56.254
out there. It was just too difficult at the time to figure out the
21:56.292 --> 21:59.638
search structure and the prior art and who was
21:59.664 --> 22:02.782
doing what. A lot of it was done in China first.
22:02.856 --> 22:06.370
And so you've got a lot of Chinese art that isn't available quite yet
22:06.420 --> 22:09.610
because it was in public. So it was kind of messy.
22:12.010 --> 22:15.026
That first one is not through the patent system. So I have no idea if
22:15.028 --> 22:17.800
I did it right, did it wrong, can fix it, whatever.
22:20.110 --> 22:24.638
Okay. And so a cryptocurrency coin example here to
22:24.664 --> 22:28.298
push this through a blockchain with crypto, just so you understand kind of
22:28.324 --> 22:31.538
how that could happen. You would start with the
22:31.564 --> 22:34.446
initial creation of a coin, like a Bitcoin,
22:34.578 --> 22:37.734
and every transaction would be confirmed and stored in a ledger.
22:37.782 --> 22:42.054
So a blockchain, and that involves identical
22:42.222 --> 22:45.498
copies of that transaction that are distributed among
22:45.534 --> 22:48.650
peers, maintaining this public blockchain.
22:49.090 --> 22:53.090
And it's not just the transaction, it's the entire ledger every
22:53.140 --> 22:56.680
time, by the way, that goes out, typically. And it's large,
22:58.450 --> 23:01.754
but the way digital data
23:01.792 --> 23:05.294
works today, it's no big deal that it's that large, but it is
23:05.332 --> 23:07.730
large and it gets larger with each transaction.
23:10.310 --> 23:14.482
That actually public ledger, though it doesn't include information about real world identities
23:14.566 --> 23:18.762
of owners of the coin. It's just basically an address,
23:18.956 --> 23:22.554
kind of similar to an account number, but it's like a data address,
23:22.712 --> 23:26.660
and it's a balance of what the coin is for each account.
23:27.230 --> 23:31.378
And then the digital wallets themselves actually use encrypted electronic
23:31.414 --> 23:35.350
signatures, and they serve as kind of the cryptographic proof
23:35.530 --> 23:38.658
that this transaction originated at this owner of the
23:38.684 --> 23:43.374
wallet. Right. And then to
23:43.412 --> 23:46.938
record transaction to the public ledger. This is actually getting into
23:46.964 --> 23:50.274
the mining aspect. So miners are really
23:50.372 --> 23:53.838
known as kind of decentralized computing systems that are
23:53.864 --> 23:57.390
participating to support the public ledger. And that
23:57.440 --> 24:01.890
means everyone on the network could be a minor and
24:01.940 --> 24:05.674
they would approve the transaction by working to solve some sort of increasingly
24:05.722 --> 24:07.100
complex problem.
24:08.870 --> 24:12.298
And the first minor would solve a puzzle and add a block representing
24:12.334 --> 24:16.126
the transaction. You can see how it can get kind of complex
24:16.198 --> 24:19.974
with what you have to do in order to mine. And there are
24:20.012 --> 24:23.838
different ways of mining that's just one way. And then
24:23.864 --> 24:26.478
once the block is mined and added to the ledger itself,
24:26.564 --> 24:29.986
everything's been approved, and all conforming transactions
24:30.058 --> 24:34.278
are permanent. The miner who actually helped to
24:34.364 --> 24:38.250
approve the transaction is rewarded with a small transaction fee.
24:38.570 --> 24:41.286
And that is the proof of work.
24:41.468 --> 24:44.938
Okay. So if you hear proof of work or you hear proof of stake,
24:45.094 --> 24:48.402
proof of stake would be I've bought in enough that I am a
24:48.416 --> 24:51.822
member and I have a stake in this network. So there are a couple of
24:51.836 --> 24:54.810
ways to do that, and you'll see these through the industry.
24:55.910 --> 24:59.406
Okay. Next definition. And I hope last for you.
24:59.528 --> 25:02.938
What is an NFP? That's a non bungable token.
25:03.094 --> 25:07.042
And an NFP could be a piece of unique digital artwork,
25:07.126 --> 25:10.726
a domain name, a rare book, an ingame item,
25:10.858 --> 25:13.914
a unique sneaker in a limited run fashion line,
25:14.072 --> 25:17.698
an event ticket or coupon, an essay, a digital
25:17.794 --> 25:22.530
collectible of sorts, like a bitmap, a unique bitmap,
25:23.030 --> 25:26.986
but basically it's non fengible.
25:27.058 --> 25:30.522
And it's a nonfungible token because it's one
25:30.536 --> 25:33.774
of a kind. It represents a real world item or like
25:33.812 --> 25:37.698
digital content. And it also uses blockchain to digitally record
25:37.784 --> 25:41.838
transactions that occur with NFT. The main difference
25:41.924 --> 25:45.174
between an NFT and a cryptocurrency, though, there's no
25:45.212 --> 25:48.418
fungible trade amongst NFPs because they are unique
25:48.454 --> 25:52.306
representations of assets and no one NFP
25:52.378 --> 25:54.630
is exactly the same as another NFT.
25:55.430 --> 25:59.430
In cryptocurrency, one Bitcoin is exactly the same
25:59.480 --> 26:03.150
as another Bitcoin, and that just doesn't happen with NFT.
26:03.530 --> 26:07.066
So this becomes yet another way of trade.
26:07.258 --> 26:11.202
Okay. Yet another system of
26:11.336 --> 26:15.274
protecting and trading these items. On the left, the digital
26:15.322 --> 26:18.260
artwork, the domain name, a book. Right.
26:19.670 --> 26:23.358
Something, though, it looks like you are talking about this, because I think this
26:23.384 --> 26:26.958
is a frequently misrepresented bit about NFT is
26:26.984 --> 26:30.510
that you're not putting the item on the blockchain, you're putting
26:30.560 --> 26:33.606
a receipt on the blockchain that indicates something
26:33.668 --> 26:38.134
else that is often not necessarily supported.
26:38.242 --> 26:41.574
And so, sure, I've got a fancy thing on a blockchain that
26:41.612 --> 26:44.850
says I own this JPEG on a server somewhere.
26:45.830 --> 26:49.758
Yes. That is fundamentally different from having the shoe in
26:49.784 --> 26:53.538
real life. That is fundamentally different from having the JPEG on
26:53.564 --> 26:57.450
your hard drive. Because also, if you have that Jpg up
26:57.500 --> 27:01.074
on a public server that anyone can go look at, anyone can go
27:01.112 --> 27:04.580
right click or screenshot the image and keep it themselves.
27:05.270 --> 27:09.286
The only thing you're actually paying for is a receipt,
27:09.478 --> 27:12.894
not the thing itself. Yes. So you can imagine maybe
27:12.932 --> 27:15.786
like original artwork way back in the day,
27:15.968 --> 27:18.330
if we had Monets as NFPs,
27:19.130 --> 27:22.818
they would maybe grow even more so in cost
27:22.904 --> 27:27.022
and in value, because you could use that NFT
27:27.106 --> 27:30.310
structure to authenticate in an easier
27:30.370 --> 27:34.054
way than having the Museum involved. In a cheaper way than having the Museum involved
27:34.102 --> 27:36.500
and anybody else who would have to verify. Right.
27:37.130 --> 27:40.582
Okay. They are also deployed as individual chains
27:40.606 --> 27:44.074
of ownership of smart contracts, and they track a specific asset.
27:44.122 --> 27:48.006
So that's what I mean. If you track the artwork over time, you might
27:48.068 --> 27:51.750
create more value of that artwork because it is an original.
27:53.870 --> 27:57.706
And like Dan said, it shows chains of ownership.
27:57.838 --> 28:01.198
It shows the data that you own this piece, but it doesn't
28:01.234 --> 28:04.686
mean you physically have it in your possession. Yeah.
28:04.808 --> 28:08.326
And that's also where I'm going to protest the provenance,
28:08.398 --> 28:11.778
because, sure, you can make a digital receipt that says, I own
28:11.804 --> 28:15.802
a Monet, but then somebody can go steal the monetary.
28:15.826 --> 28:19.278
Yes. And you lose it.
28:19.304 --> 28:21.380
Right. Because it's stuff.
28:22.970 --> 28:26.578
Okay. So before we go back to those three concepts,
28:26.614 --> 28:29.814
I wanted to just give you this evolution of the Web. I thought this was
28:29.852 --> 28:33.318
interesting. This is from a podcast, The Tim Ferris Show.
28:33.464 --> 28:36.702
And it was interesting to see how the web had changed over time and how
28:36.716 --> 28:39.980
they categorized it. I really never categorized it.
28:41.390 --> 28:45.414
So Web 1.0 was basically 1990 to about four.
28:45.572 --> 28:49.386
It was open platform. Nobody really owned it or controlled it
28:49.508 --> 28:53.120
outside. Maybe the government. Right. And started as a government thing.
28:53.810 --> 28:57.258
And products and content were limited. There wasn't a lot of
28:57.284 --> 29:00.140
blogs and a lot of user created content.
29:01.430 --> 29:04.674
This is from a magazine. And I put it up here in a digital form
29:04.712 --> 29:08.002
on the web. And the advertisements on the Internet were banned
29:08.026 --> 29:11.050
at the time. And you have very few content creators.
29:11.110 --> 29:14.840
It just wasn't what it is today.
29:16.610 --> 29:20.370
Okay. And today this is about 2004 to now
29:20.420 --> 29:24.378
and maybe a few years from now. This is open and closed platform
29:24.464 --> 29:28.580
options. And what that means is in an open platform option.
29:29.030 --> 29:32.802
I've chosen to purchase my domain and
29:32.816 --> 29:36.402
I run things from my domain. I might use a
29:36.416 --> 29:39.560
Google or a Microsoft server setup to
29:40.310 --> 29:43.820
host, but I don't use Google services and I don't use
29:44.630 --> 29:48.486
Google's platform. So I'm not using Gmail, I'm not using Facebook to provide
29:48.548 --> 29:52.294
content. I'm not using Blogger as a basis
29:52.342 --> 29:56.082
to write my blog. I have got my own domain. The other side of
29:56.096 --> 29:59.838
that is a closed platform, and that is actually using
29:59.924 --> 30:03.406
some of the bigger names out of complete and total ease
30:03.538 --> 30:07.114
to be able to upload content quickly and easily
30:07.162 --> 30:10.220
and formatted without a whole lot of effort on the user part.
30:11.630 --> 30:14.818
And right now we are in the age of rich Internet applications.
30:14.854 --> 30:18.366
We've got interactive Google Maps, social media,
30:18.428 --> 30:22.134
Semantic Web. And in the future, we're looking at this Web
30:22.172 --> 30:25.246
3.0. This is something that is underway.
30:25.318 --> 30:28.834
You do see a little bit of this these days. It is likely
30:28.882 --> 30:32.730
going to be open platform, and it may or may not use blockchain.
30:33.230 --> 30:36.858
This decentralizes a lot of things. This takes the data
30:36.944 --> 30:40.774
put up there owned by users and data generators and fewer
30:40.822 --> 30:44.226
large companies. And another way
30:44.228 --> 30:48.138
to look at this. I put this together because I thought this was
30:48.164 --> 30:51.462
interesting, too. Web 1.0 was a read only.
30:51.596 --> 30:54.486
You had your Netscapes, your AOL, your Microsoft, Google,
30:54.548 --> 30:57.654
and it wasn't a true read only. You could make some changes, but it was
30:57.692 --> 31:01.362
typically read only. Web 2.0 is kind of a read write,
31:01.436 --> 31:04.954
and that's where we are now. You've got big Google, Apple, Facebook,
31:05.002 --> 31:08.742
Spotify, et cetera, Twitter. They own large
31:08.816 --> 31:12.078
portions of market share for what
31:12.104 --> 31:15.666
people are doing on the web and Web 3.0.
31:15.788 --> 31:18.862
This will likely be open and users will be able to build and orchestrate
31:18.886 --> 31:22.402
their own platforms and content a little bit easier. And they'll
31:22.426 --> 31:25.498
keep this out of the big data CEO power structure,
31:25.654 --> 31:29.434
which means data hoarding, narratives and censorship can be owned and operated
31:29.482 --> 31:33.402
by the people. So we'll see where we go. But I thought
31:33.596 --> 31:35.240
the evolution was interesting.
31:36.590 --> 31:40.114
So I have a question for the group. What does this Web evolution
31:40.222 --> 31:44.010
blockchain and NFT tech mean for IP ownership?
31:44.330 --> 31:48.018
Will we see some sort of change in the patent system for inventions that
31:48.044 --> 31:50.190
involve digital content and software?
31:51.590 --> 31:54.486
Are we going to see new protection art units? Are we going to see a
31:54.488 --> 31:58.078
new type of category outside of patents and copywriting? Dan,
31:58.114 --> 31:59.900
I bet you have an opinion on this.
32:05.370 --> 32:08.520
He may be stepped away. No, sorry.
32:10.110 --> 32:13.942
I'll be honest, I had tuned out for just a moment.
32:14.076 --> 32:17.134
Oh, no, for texting me, so I wasn't quite sure he called me out.
32:17.172 --> 32:20.820
Now I feel like I need to say something intelligent. I wasn't back
32:22.810 --> 32:26.858
in there. I'm sorry. And there's a lot of data there too, so I know
32:27.004 --> 32:30.518
it's getting late. No, I apologize. I don't mean to call
32:30.544 --> 32:34.034
you out on that, but my thought was, are you
32:34.072 --> 32:37.554
thinking we might see some changes in the patent
32:37.602 --> 32:41.490
system around the blockchain and NFP property ownership
32:41.550 --> 32:45.014
technology I had up here? Maybe new
32:45.052 --> 32:48.242
protection units, or maybe we would have a new category outside of patents and
32:48.256 --> 32:52.094
copywriting. Go ahead. Yeah,
32:52.252 --> 32:56.090
I see this. A new art unit I think makes
32:56.140 --> 33:00.054
definite sense with just the sheer market interest and number of people filing
33:00.102 --> 33:03.722
stuff on it. It would behoove the patent office to have and
33:03.736 --> 33:07.240
I'm honestly would be surprised if they don't have a new art unit already
33:07.870 --> 33:11.430
with the interest of it additional forms of intellectual
33:11.490 --> 33:14.714
property in response to this
33:14.752 --> 33:18.618
type of stuff. Like do we now have something Besides patents and Copyright that's
33:18.654 --> 33:23.746
specific to entries
33:23.938 --> 33:26.550
on the spreadsheet that is a blockchain?
33:28.430 --> 33:33.762
I'm not sure. Yeah, well, maybe kind
33:33.776 --> 33:37.398
of a transactional thing might be something different because
33:37.424 --> 33:41.118
you don't get a Copyright and
33:41.144 --> 33:44.958
I guess you could still kind of print maybe Ms. Right, because right
33:44.984 --> 33:49.050
now the Copyright system requires hard copies of things.
33:49.100 --> 33:52.734
I guess you can maybe still put NFT on a
33:52.892 --> 33:56.350
disk. The NFT is just a receipt.
33:56.470 --> 34:00.018
And so with the Copyright. So cool.
34:00.104 --> 34:03.502
You've got a unique image. I've got an NFT that's
34:03.526 --> 34:07.830
just somewhere on a spreadsheet that says my
34:07.880 --> 34:11.622
username string is associated with this bit of data
34:11.696 --> 34:16.158
that indicates the receipt towards we
34:16.184 --> 34:20.490
all just sort of agree that it indicates a receipt towards this unique image.
34:21.050 --> 34:25.854
I don't see how that is anything beyond like
34:25.892 --> 34:29.658
regular. If I wanted to go now print a bunch of copies of
34:29.744 --> 34:33.090
that and distribute that and sell those images,
34:33.470 --> 34:36.798
I don't quite see how that's anything independent from do
34:36.824 --> 34:40.662
I have the Copyright? I mean, perhaps you
34:40.676 --> 34:44.142
could write a human law that says a
34:44.156 --> 34:47.946
national law that says the
34:48.008 --> 34:51.658
people acknowledge this particular distributed
34:51.694 --> 34:55.940
ledger as indicating towards
34:56.750 --> 35:00.810
Copyright. So if you want to have the Copyright for
35:00.920 --> 35:04.534
a given piece of work, you must have somehow,
35:04.582 --> 35:08.454
but then you get over the whole anonymity of
35:08.492 --> 35:11.646
what the cryptography of the usernames is supposed to be.
35:11.828 --> 35:15.270
That okay, you must publicly let us know who you are,
35:15.380 --> 35:19.206
and you publicly must have visible on this blockchain your
35:19.268 --> 35:23.430
receipt that has a certain indication towards a given work of art.
35:23.540 --> 35:27.862
And if you satisfy that, then we all agree that you have Copyright
35:27.946 --> 35:30.870
towards the object indicated in your receipt.
35:31.670 --> 35:36.102
And then I don't see how that's any more helpful than just a
35:36.116 --> 35:39.450
Copyright. A Copyright. We the people agree
35:39.500 --> 35:42.980
to form a database that anyone can access
35:43.670 --> 35:47.180
of who owns the Copyright forgiven works of art,
35:48.530 --> 35:52.062
whether it's distributed or not. I think the bigger point
35:52.076 --> 35:56.010
that brings up, though, is that elements of Web
35:56.060 --> 35:59.958
Three are fundamentally in
35:59.984 --> 36:04.158
opposition to the
36:04.244 --> 36:08.046
general premise of the intellectual property system.
36:08.108 --> 36:11.838
Right. Because, as Dan points out, the whole intellectual property system is based
36:11.864 --> 36:15.802
on the idea that in exchange for some limited monopoly,
36:15.946 --> 36:19.758
some ownership. Right. Whatever I give
36:19.784 --> 36:23.206
to the public knowledge and share knowledge
36:23.278 --> 36:27.702
and information technology, whatever with the public in
36:27.716 --> 36:31.590
exchange for those rights. But the whole essence of aspects of Web
36:31.640 --> 36:34.954
Three, the blockchain elements,
36:35.062 --> 36:39.054
NFPs and things like that is all around anonymity or at least
36:39.152 --> 36:41.900
as much anonymity as you want to have with it.
36:42.890 --> 36:46.098
It seems like those two elements are kind of in opposition to
36:46.124 --> 36:50.000
one another. It's really interesting.
36:50.570 --> 36:54.462
I'm not a Copyright attorney. I wonder if
36:54.476 --> 36:58.150
an artist makes a physical painting
36:58.270 --> 37:02.118
their own painting, and then they sell that painting, the original painting to
37:02.144 --> 37:05.394
someone owns that painting. Can the owner of that
37:05.432 --> 37:08.900
painting make prints of that painting and then sell it?
37:09.470 --> 37:13.578
So does buying an original painting confer the Copyright to you?
37:13.724 --> 37:17.058
Or is the Copyright still owned by the owner or by
37:17.084 --> 37:20.338
the creator? By the artist owned by the creator.
37:20.374 --> 37:24.090
Because unless there's like a true assignment, if you think about it like I buy
37:24.140 --> 37:27.954
Cat and a Hat, that doesn't mean that I can take
37:27.992 --> 37:31.902
Cat in the Hat and decide to make a
37:31.916 --> 37:35.120
million copies of it and go sell. Right? Right.
37:36.350 --> 37:40.342
Some kind of work for higher provision or some kind of actual assignment.
37:40.486 --> 37:43.758
Right. Even if Dr. Seuss wrote down Cat
37:43.784 --> 37:46.878
in the Hat on some pieces of paper and you bought the original, doesn't mean
37:46.904 --> 37:50.550
that you can copy it and sell it. Right. Same thing,
37:50.660 --> 37:54.162
I think probably from logic would go from it
37:54.236 --> 37:58.002
would follow for an NFT, if you're buying an original piece of
37:58.016 --> 38:01.482
digital art, that doesn't give you the Copyright to it.
38:01.556 --> 38:06.982
Right? Right. If the
38:06.996 --> 38:10.860
creator of the work of art or the creative work,
38:12.210 --> 38:15.698
they can be copyrighted. But then again, they're also revealing
38:15.734 --> 38:19.306
who they are and the anonymity goes away assuming that they want to
38:19.308 --> 38:20.290
be anonymous.
38:23.950 --> 38:28.010
Digital art is infinitely reproducible
38:28.690 --> 38:32.526
to the easiest extreme. The fundamental difference between owning
38:32.658 --> 38:36.578
the Mona Lisa and a copy of the Mona Lisa is quite clear,
38:36.664 --> 38:40.120
I think, to all of us, because of the provenance and the history of
38:40.510 --> 38:44.006
the physical good that is the Mona Lisa versus a copy of
38:44.008 --> 38:47.618
the Mona Lisa. Right. Whereas it's just
38:47.644 --> 38:49.550
a JPEG or a PNG.
38:51.070 --> 38:54.578
It's an argument, I feel like, for and against NFT, because what
38:54.604 --> 38:58.442
NFPs do, in a way, is make it possible to have
38:58.516 --> 39:02.298
an original of a digital piece of art. Where otherwise
39:02.334 --> 39:05.990
what, are you going to sell someone's computer? No, but again, you need the
39:06.040 --> 39:09.302
art on. It doesn't make sense. You don't have the
39:09.436 --> 39:14.330
original. You have a receipt saying that I
39:14.380 --> 39:18.100
spent money towards this thing in a weird way. There is no
39:18.550 --> 39:19.610
original.
39:22.550 --> 39:26.362
I mean, this is my maybe naivete around the space because there's
39:26.386 --> 39:31.578
definitely some you
39:31.604 --> 39:35.490
have this receipt, but isn't there a way for you
39:35.540 --> 39:39.018
to view the thing that you have a receipt for, like even
39:39.044 --> 39:42.740
in some kind of digital, like in a digital wallet, you know what I mean?
39:43.250 --> 39:47.430
So putting the image itself on the blockchain would be
39:47.540 --> 39:50.922
absurdly. Wasteful a huge amount of data, slow everything
39:50.996 --> 39:54.978
down. So no one actually does that. What is commonly done is
39:55.004 --> 39:58.278
that there will be some sort of URL that can be readily or some
39:58.304 --> 40:01.782
string that can readily spit out just a link
40:01.916 --> 40:05.346
to some external hosting site, like room,
40:05.468 --> 40:09.850
essentially for you to view the thing except for it's on the public ledger
40:10.030 --> 40:13.378
so people can access it. And so also, you don't
40:13.414 --> 40:17.046
necessarily have control. You are trusting the
40:17.108 --> 40:21.006
host of the image that it will continue to be there.
40:21.188 --> 40:24.858
So hilariously. You could buy an NFT for something hosted on
40:24.884 --> 40:27.870
a site, you spend your money and then, oh,
40:27.920 --> 40:31.198
the company hosting it couldn't pay the server couldn't
40:31.234 --> 40:34.158
pay for the server space anymore. So it all gets pulled away.
40:34.304 --> 40:36.500
Now your URL indicates nothing.
40:38.150 --> 40:41.694
Yeah, I think this goes back to Kristen's first slide, pretty much, which is
40:41.732 --> 40:45.754
trust. You are trusting an artist,
40:45.802 --> 40:49.602
you're trusting the system that you're putting your money down and that
40:49.736 --> 40:53.454
everyone agrees that you own the quote, unquote original, whatever that
40:53.492 --> 40:56.878
means. You're right, Dan. Exactly. It's just a receipt. But there's
40:56.914 --> 41:00.260
this trust that's been built up and
41:01.010 --> 41:02.480
yeah, I don't know,
41:04.490 --> 41:09.550
a couple of random thoughts. I know we're almost done, but like cryptocurrency
41:09.610 --> 41:13.062
in general, there's a lot of people talking about it now. And what does it
41:13.076 --> 41:16.362
mean? What is it for and what is it really good for a lot of
41:16.376 --> 41:19.858
smart people, at least I don't have a super strong opinion
41:19.894 --> 41:23.478
either way. But a lot of smart people have said it's basically just the
41:23.504 --> 41:27.874
greater fool. There's no value inherent.
41:27.922 --> 41:31.326
There's no inherent value. And people argue back and forth about that.
41:31.448 --> 41:34.650
That's the real crux of the issue is their inherent value. So people
41:34.700 --> 41:38.430
argue about it. But NFTs and crypto, I think they're very
41:38.480 --> 41:43.054
interesting and sort of like revolutionary on one side from the economic
41:43.222 --> 41:46.746
kind of analysis of it. Like, what are these things really worth?
41:46.808 --> 41:50.214
Do they really have value? Do you really own something or not?
41:50.372 --> 41:53.482
From the patent side and the technology side, I actually think it's
41:53.506 --> 41:56.398
a lot more straightforward. You've got software,
41:56.554 --> 42:00.106
you've got encryption, you've got cryptography, you've got blockchain,
42:00.178 --> 42:04.254
you've got these real inventions, these real technical things that
42:04.292 --> 42:07.726
people are doing that you can look at and patent.
42:07.918 --> 42:11.514
So in that sense, no easier or
42:11.552 --> 42:14.960
harder than AI or ML or
42:15.650 --> 42:19.002
all the same issues with them. Not with 101,
42:19.076 --> 42:22.242
basically. Right. I think we'll be there for a
42:22.256 --> 42:26.434
crypto and blockchain. But I don't know, it's the controversy.
42:26.602 --> 42:29.418
If you will or the weirdness of them. I feel like it's more on the
42:29.444 --> 42:32.502
economic socioeconomic side of
42:32.516 --> 42:36.318
things, less on the technical and patent stuff that would
42:36.344 --> 42:39.786
be relevant for a patent. I think the one
42:39.848 --> 42:43.340
most interesting argument I've seen for
42:43.790 --> 42:47.038
NFTs, at least Cryptos and other Things NFT,
42:47.074 --> 42:50.878
is that it allows artists to potentially reap
42:50.914 --> 42:54.538
more benefit than they've historically been able to reap from their creative
42:54.574 --> 42:58.158
works. Right. Because people may be more willing to give
42:58.184 --> 43:02.062
them money in support of them through this mechanism.
43:02.146 --> 43:05.886
That's maybe more accessible or easier to find
43:05.948 --> 43:09.798
them than it would have otherwise been. And so I can
43:09.824 --> 43:12.934
now put my money and share my money with lots of different artists
43:12.982 --> 43:15.666
who I believe in support want to whatever.
43:15.848 --> 43:19.002
Whereas maybe they were less findable before.
43:19.076 --> 43:22.750
So that's an interesting aspect
43:22.810 --> 43:26.662
of the NFT. I'll say as someone who participates
43:26.746 --> 43:30.826
in a fair amount of online art production,
43:31.018 --> 43:34.102
publication discourse,
43:34.246 --> 43:37.794
exchange right now, NFPs are making
43:37.832 --> 43:41.146
it more complicated. You have to go through the rigor of setting up the wallet,
43:41.278 --> 43:44.862
setting up, getting all your hashes. You have to deal with
43:44.936 --> 43:48.618
the opaqueness to a certain extent. We're talking
43:48.644 --> 43:52.218
about how public and open the
43:52.244 --> 43:55.890
blockchain allows transactions to be. There are many
43:55.940 --> 43:59.326
new studies demonstrating how much of it is wash trading.
43:59.398 --> 44:02.698
There is far less of an interest than the people selling
44:02.734 --> 44:06.378
NFTs want artists to believe are there are many cases of
44:06.404 --> 44:10.218
artists going in trying to
44:10.244 --> 44:13.702
sell their art as NFPs. They find themselves overwhelmed
44:13.786 --> 44:17.554
by the entry costs of how you actually go and Mint
44:17.602 --> 44:21.150
your NFT. And then there's no actual
44:21.200 --> 44:24.846
market for it because the examples of things going at crazy
44:24.908 --> 44:28.306
prices. A lot of that is wash trading, where bad actors
44:28.378 --> 44:32.410
are selling it to themselves to fabricate seeming
44:32.470 --> 44:35.322
interest. On the other hand,
44:35.396 --> 44:39.406
there's already tons of ways to go celebrate and support the artists
44:39.478 --> 44:43.174
that you like. A lot of the artists who have public activity
44:43.222 --> 44:47.970
on the web, who have their open portfolios, they've got various
44:50.970 --> 44:54.610
web pages where you can throw with a credit card. It sounds like
44:54.660 --> 44:57.010
if you don't trust your credit card company, what are you going to do?
44:57.060 --> 45:00.502
But with credit card, with other already
45:00.576 --> 45:04.438
established digital payment systems, you can send them money.
45:04.584 --> 45:08.218
A lot of them have online merch stores. There are tons of ways to do
45:08.244 --> 45:11.962
that. And from a perspective on end, those have
45:11.976 --> 45:15.420
been far more healthy and successful for artists than
45:15.810 --> 45:19.318
trying to Mint NFTs and then sell them to
45:19.344 --> 45:22.906
a nonexistent audience. Okay, so it's kind
45:22.908 --> 45:26.086
of a difficult marketplace, you're saying? Yeah.
45:26.268 --> 45:29.446
Okay. So basically
45:29.508 --> 45:32.842
the strategy for these sorts of inventions, you're going to need to do
45:32.856 --> 45:34.870
a wider foreign filing.
45:36.750 --> 45:40.102
You want to do that because it actually has sales
45:40.176 --> 45:43.658
and in use occurrences as possible from any location. With a computing
45:43.694 --> 45:47.050
device, you're dealing with financial transactions which
45:47.100 --> 45:50.338
happen all over the world. And also one
45:50.364 --> 45:53.762
note, China is a huge player in inventions and companies for blockchain.
45:53.846 --> 45:56.170
So always file in China.
45:57.450 --> 46:01.802
And as far as what's out there right now, you've probably gotten thousands
46:01.886 --> 46:05.242
of blockchain or cryptocurrency sort of technology
46:05.376 --> 46:08.110
on file. There's not a whole lot allowed yet,
46:08.160 --> 46:11.542
maybe in the hundreds. So it's still an open market.
46:11.616 --> 46:15.238
So make sure you're mining those fields. If you have
46:15.264 --> 46:18.934
inventors who do things tangential to this and also
46:18.972 --> 46:22.574
litigation isn't super common yet, and as soon as somebody profits
46:22.622 --> 46:26.014
from it, these patents that will come. But right now
46:26.112 --> 46:29.290
it's kind of an open market. And then the other piece.
46:29.340 --> 46:33.022
Consider trade secrets before disclosing all your concepts in the patent application.
46:33.156 --> 46:36.698
This might be especially important if you do blockchain
46:36.734 --> 46:39.898
in a slightly different way if your cryptocurrency is new and
46:39.924 --> 46:42.550
different and functions differently than typical.
46:44.130 --> 46:47.278
When you're looking at the claims, this is going to look like method claims and
46:47.304 --> 46:50.578
system claims and computer readable medium claims, and they're all going
46:50.604 --> 46:53.582
to look very mirrored. You probably have a single method,
46:53.666 --> 46:57.394
a system that kind of copies that method, and a computer readable medium that
46:57.432 --> 47:00.060
also mirrors the method or system.
47:00.630 --> 47:04.478
And that is because I think you'll get a lot of restriction
47:04.514 --> 47:07.798
requirements if you do not do that in these fields. I think
47:07.824 --> 47:11.338
your claims would be different enough method wise that if you
47:11.364 --> 47:15.046
had two method claims that even were
47:15.108 --> 47:17.890
slightly different, I think you're going to get a restriction.
47:19.170 --> 47:22.382
Examples of potentially patentable core Technologies When you're
47:22.406 --> 47:26.170
interviewing inventors, you may see things like blockchain tech
47:26.220 --> 47:30.490
changes, distributed ledger changes, data structure differences.
47:31.050 --> 47:34.318
Remember, new data structures can be a way to
47:34.344 --> 47:37.706
get over a subject matter 101 rejection.
47:37.778 --> 47:42.158
So if you have a new data structure, describe it transaction
47:42.194 --> 47:45.082
protocols, processing and validation methods might be new.
47:45.216 --> 47:48.902
We've got digital wallet stuff and apps and software
47:48.926 --> 47:53.678
that might be new or work different than typical smart
47:53.714 --> 47:58.322
contract platforms, different ways of mining consensus methodologies
47:58.406 --> 48:01.690
services, applications of any of the bot
48:02.550 --> 48:05.674
It's software, and so it's wide open for
48:05.712 --> 48:06.670
combinations.
48:09.190 --> 48:12.762
Remember in the specification, get your subject matter eligibility
48:12.846 --> 48:16.358
stuff in there. It will happen. I don't see
48:16.384 --> 48:20.778
a way around this. You're adding business method, financial ideas,
48:20.934 --> 48:24.546
and software in general in like a package
48:24.618 --> 48:28.514
almost with these inventions. So I
48:28.552 --> 48:32.402
think you will see these rejections more often unless something changes in
48:32.416 --> 48:36.362
the landscape, but to avoid those. Building your descriptions for
48:36.376 --> 48:40.154
the advantages. Building your technical solutions to technical problems.
48:40.312 --> 48:44.260
Describe practical applications, describe improvements to technology,
48:44.590 --> 48:48.230
and add your specific results. Outcomes I don't always
48:48.280 --> 48:51.954
like to do this. Improvements to technology tends to denigrate prior
48:52.002 --> 48:54.474
art if you do them improperly.
48:54.642 --> 48:57.962
So be careful, but also get them in there for
48:57.976 --> 49:01.598
this type of technology because you will likely need to rely on
49:01.624 --> 49:05.450
them in office action responses and appeals.
49:06.550 --> 49:10.034
Example Advantages These inventions can maybe provide cost
49:10.072 --> 49:13.470
and error reduction, tamper resistance
49:13.590 --> 49:16.610
or security over conventional transactions,
49:16.990 --> 49:19.850
fraud deterrence over conventional transactions,
49:20.350 --> 49:24.410
and reduction in the errors of system failures over conventional transactions,
49:24.970 --> 49:27.902
and some of these might go the opposite way. So it just depends on what
49:27.916 --> 49:31.934
your invention would be. And then one
49:31.972 --> 49:34.970
last thing for the specification, adjust for open source.
49:35.650 --> 49:39.554
This software is typically open source. It is done so
49:39.592 --> 49:43.226
for a reason. It is in the public domain and
49:43.288 --> 49:46.420
you just want to be careful to cover in your application.
49:47.410 --> 49:51.794
Why is your innovation new or different? Or what problems that
49:51.832 --> 49:55.562
existed before did you solve and ensure you
49:55.576 --> 49:59.130
have included descriptions for aspects that are not part of the open source pieces?
49:59.190 --> 50:02.874
If you have several pieces that are not open source,
50:02.922 --> 50:06.062
make sure those are thoroughly described because you may need to
50:06.076 --> 50:09.482
rely on them. And the last thing that you
50:09.496 --> 50:13.134
can look at at your leisure, this was the patent I did in 2019
50:13.242 --> 50:16.838
patent application for Google. And it
50:16.864 --> 50:21.246
was basically about creating a self sovereign identity
50:21.318 --> 50:25.142
account and being able to host that account and
50:25.336 --> 50:30.014
let people control or not control that account without
50:30.172 --> 50:34.182
being a Google and Apple of Facebook. So this was a user
50:34.206 --> 50:37.818
owned account. They did their own thing. They used a distributed
50:37.854 --> 50:41.802
log technology here in the right hand corner. They used public keys and private keys
50:41.826 --> 50:44.918
for the crypto, and they had policies and permissions for their
50:44.944 --> 50:48.482
account. And basically they
50:48.496 --> 50:51.938
were able to set up a blockchain system for a
50:51.964 --> 50:55.718
user to own an account. This application in
50:55.744 --> 50:59.738
particular was about, can I provide access control? Can I
50:59.764 --> 51:02.966
provide device control and all using this account?
51:03.088 --> 51:06.566
Right. So maybe I have a building with a super, and the super
51:06.628 --> 51:09.760
owns three of the four
51:10.390 --> 51:13.818
apartments, and he wants to provide utilities and door
51:13.854 --> 51:18.090
locks and maybe rent payment possibilities.
51:18.150 --> 51:21.858
He can all do that through an account like this without being monitored
51:21.894 --> 51:26.258
by a third party and without having to rely on a third party too.
51:26.404 --> 51:29.982
This also means which can happen with a third party,
51:30.006 --> 51:33.458
but it means it can occur by
51:33.484 --> 51:37.538
the actual person who owns the account being able to provide access
51:37.624 --> 51:41.046
or provide things through the account to other users.
51:41.238 --> 51:45.270
So it's an interesting idea to have maybe an entire apartment
51:45.330 --> 51:49.658
building on the same network and being able to share
51:49.804 --> 51:53.140
and maybe share costs share.
51:54.190 --> 51:57.950
If I locked myself out, maybe my neighbor can unlock
51:58.270 --> 52:01.398
because I gave him permission earlier to unlock my door.
52:01.434 --> 52:05.260
Right, right. Things like that.
52:06.190 --> 52:10.646
Can I point out the irony of that application being
52:10.708 --> 52:14.150
owned by Google? Yes, you can.
52:14.260 --> 52:18.078
Believe me. So did the inventor. The inventor is just a brilliant
52:18.114 --> 52:21.700
UK man who does a lot of contracting for Google and
52:25.210 --> 52:28.610
just lovely the way he went through this.
52:28.780 --> 52:32.238
Every time he had a description, he would say, and unlike
52:32.274 --> 52:36.374
Google, he would describe his invention. And so it was
52:36.412 --> 52:39.950
great. It was great to see that even their engineering people thinking,
52:40.120 --> 52:43.910
yeah, back to the trusted environment.
52:45.670 --> 52:48.750
Yeah, exactly. Okay. Key takeaways
52:48.810 --> 52:52.334
are really just there's lots of innovations coming with blockchain web three
52:52.372 --> 52:56.130
might be an interesting growth step. And when drafting blockchains
52:56.250 --> 53:00.726
building help for yourself with that subject matter eligibility rejection
53:00.918 --> 53:04.058
content I mean, if it continues like it is,
53:04.084 --> 53:06.340
it will still be painful in this field.
53:08.930 --> 53:12.174
No end in sight. There no end in sight. All right, that's it.
53:12.212 --> 53:15.858
Any questions or comments? No, that was
53:15.884 --> 53:19.062
awesome. Good rundown of the space.
53:19.136 --> 53:23.250
Now when all the talking heads talk about these things now,
53:23.360 --> 53:26.806
I appreciate the nuance of the receipt
53:26.938 --> 53:30.980
versus the NFP the whole thing.
53:31.730 --> 53:34.940
I guess I understood the digital room thing, but I kind of thought,
53:36.290 --> 53:39.270
yeah, it was like way more accessible,
53:39.830 --> 53:44.142
potentially more controllable. So that's interesting. I didn't appreciate that.
53:44.336 --> 53:47.960
I didn't either. Thank you, Dan. Yeah,
53:49.430 --> 53:52.940
I told him earlier that it's happening. He already gone.
53:53.450 --> 53:56.010
Well, I think we're still recording.
53:59.730 --> 54:03.370
No worries. Well, thank you. All right,
54:03.420 --> 54:07.774
that's all for today, folks. Thanks for listening. And remember to check us out@aurorapatins.com
54:07.812 --> 54:11.294
for more great podcasts, blogs and videos covering all things patent
54:11.342 --> 54:14.326
strategy. And if you're an agent or attorney and would like to be part of
54:14.328 --> 54:18.178
the discussion or an inventor with a topic you'd like to hear discussed, email us
54:18.204 --> 54:21.998
at podcast@aurorapatins.com do remember that this podcast
54:22.034 --> 54:25.660
does not constitute legal advice and until next time, keep calm and patent on.
00:05.290 --> 00:08.922
Good day and welcome to the Patently Strategic Podcast, where we discuss all things at
00:08.936 --> 00:12.634
the intersection of business, technology, and patents. This podcast
00:12.682 --> 00:16.642
is a monthly discussion amongst experts in the field of patenting. It is for inventors,
00:16.726 --> 00:20.350
founders and IP professionals alike, established or aspiring.
00:20.410 --> 00:24.078
In today's episode, our experts take on the future of the Web
00:24.224 --> 00:27.510
Metaverse. It's the buzziest of the buzzwords in tech today,
00:27.620 --> 00:31.786
and will soon be joining the ranks of AI and ML as requisite keywords
00:31.858 --> 00:35.062
in the next generation of pitch decks and patent applications.
00:35.146 --> 00:38.386
But what are the core components of the Metaverse, and what are their implications
00:38.458 --> 00:42.066
in the world of intellectual property? The Patently Strategic Podcast will
00:42.068 --> 00:45.442
be exploring this topic over the course of several upcoming episodes,
00:45.526 --> 00:48.390
but we begin our journey today with Web 30,
00:48.500 --> 00:52.002
the third major iteration of the Internet. While it may prove to be the
00:52.016 --> 00:56.298
next great tech revolution, the broad shape and definition of the Metaverse itself
00:56.444 --> 00:59.814
is still more firmly baked in science fiction than in commercial tech
00:59.852 --> 01:03.018
reality. Many of its core building blocks, however, are likely right
01:03.044 --> 01:06.462
in front of our eyes or headsets. Perhaps history
01:06.536 --> 01:10.186
shows that most major technology revolutions are rarely leaps,
01:10.318 --> 01:14.158
but instead evolutionary products of incremental steps composed
01:14.194 --> 01:17.694
of many existing building blocks met with market readiness. The Web
01:17.732 --> 01:21.514
30 innovations of blockchain, cryptocurrency, and NFTs
01:21.562 --> 01:25.186
that are taking shape in front of us will no doubt be among these essential
01:25.258 --> 01:29.314
building blocks. With an ability to touch both our physical and virtual worlds,
01:29.362 --> 01:33.154
cryptocurrencies could form the monetary basis for all economic activity
01:33.202 --> 01:36.558
in the Metaverse NFTs make it possible for unique items to
01:36.584 --> 01:40.102
exist and assets to be exclusively owned in the digital realm.
01:40.186 --> 01:44.110
The very foundations and infrastructure for the Metaverse in its virtual worlds
01:44.170 --> 01:46.040
could be built on blockchain technology.
01:47.090 --> 01:50.682
Perhaps the Metaverse is simply how we experience the third major phase of
01:50.696 --> 01:54.562
the web. Or maybe in its purest, most decentralized form, the Metaverse
01:54.586 --> 01:58.002
is built entirely on top of it. In any case, it's hard to imagine a
01:58.016 --> 02:00.946
future where the two are not inextricably linked.
02:01.138 --> 02:04.962
This third phase of the Internet also poses some of the most interesting questions
02:05.036 --> 02:08.938
for the world of intellectual property. What will the impact be on digital property rights
02:08.974 --> 02:12.778
in a secure marketplace governed by smart contracts? How will copyrights
02:12.814 --> 02:16.762
play in digital worlds with their own art and governance? Is there merit in considering
02:16.786 --> 02:20.542
a new type of protection category outside of patents and copyrights?
02:20.686 --> 02:24.370
In our very first IP Watchdog episode, Kristen Hansen,
02:24.430 --> 02:27.226
patent strategist and software patent guru here in Aurora,
02:27.298 --> 02:31.302
leads a discussion along with our all star patent panel, digging into the
02:31.316 --> 02:35.442
fundamentals of blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs and why the hype the
02:35.456 --> 02:39.142
current state of the technology. Questions around what Web evolution,
02:39.226 --> 02:42.382
blockchain and NFT technology means for IP ownership,
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and critical strategies for protecting blockchain and cryptocurrency
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innovations. The first half hour of this episode is the best, most succinct
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understandable overview I've personally heard on blockchain,
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crypto, N FTS, and the evolution of the web. What follows
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is a wonderful conversation around potential IP world impacts and
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some very practical tips on drafting strategies and working with inventors
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who are innovating in these spaces. Kristen is also joined
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today by our always exceptional group of IP experts,
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including Dr. Ashley Sloat, President and director of
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patent strategy here at Aurora, David Jackrel, President of
03:16.724 --> 03:21.226
Jackrel Consulting, Shelley Couturier, patent strategist and search specialist,
03:21.298 --> 03:25.102
and Daniel Wright, patent strategist. And one final administrative note
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before joining the panel, we're hiring. If you'd like to join our growing team
03:28.892 --> 03:32.206
and participate in great conversations like these, go to aurorapetance.
03:32.278 --> 03:35.718
Comcareers to learn more and apply. We'll also include that
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link in the show notes. All right, without further Ado,
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take it away, crypto crew. All right. And we'll let
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Kristen take it away and educate us
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on okay, perfect. All this good stuff,
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highly relevant. Hot topic. Every time I turn on the business
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news or whatever, it's talking about my
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tanked, crypto.
04:03.090 --> 04:06.742
What's the future? Well, I'm hoping to do
04:06.756 --> 04:10.318
a little bit of a tutorial, too, because some of this stuff I knew,
04:10.464 --> 04:13.560
but there were so many things that I went, oh, I had no idea.
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I thought this group might appreciate that having you go in
04:17.736 --> 04:21.022
and out of software or you don't do software full time, it's kind
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of nice to get a quick primer. Absolutely.
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Okay. So the overview that I'm going to go through,
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blockchain and cryptocurrency, why so much hype? We'll talk
04:32.304 --> 04:36.490
about the state of the technology, and we'll talk about protecting these types of innovations.
04:37.590 --> 04:40.882
So why are you seeing all this cryptocurrency and
04:40.896 --> 04:44.530
blockchain tech out there in the last few years? And the short
04:44.580 --> 04:47.866
answer is actually trust and trust
04:48.048 --> 04:51.250
issues with digital money have really been overcome.
04:51.630 --> 04:56.050
And the long answer to that is they've overcome using blockchain
04:56.550 --> 05:00.218
because blockchain actually gives you a cryptographic
05:00.254 --> 05:04.270
way to store and use and access data. And so
05:04.320 --> 05:07.262
I will go into what each is and how they interact.
05:07.406 --> 05:10.894
But basically, digital currency has been
05:10.932 --> 05:14.306
just distrusted. It has not had a very centralized
05:14.378 --> 05:18.106
way or view. And with blockchain, it can have that now.
05:18.228 --> 05:21.110
And so all you've seen is cryptocurrency,
05:21.170 --> 05:24.398
cryptocurrency, cryptocurrency. And nobody really knows
05:24.434 --> 05:27.060
exactly how it works or what it is, but they want it.
05:29.530 --> 05:32.766
Like I said, it's very secure. It's decentralized.
05:32.898 --> 05:36.746
There's really no third party meddling here. It's not
05:36.808 --> 05:40.274
underwritten like the Department of treasury, gold and
05:40.312 --> 05:43.562
cash, just a different exchange. And the
05:43.576 --> 05:47.538
decentralization of this means no government, no banks,
05:47.634 --> 05:51.760
no data providers, no Facebook and Google in your inbox or
05:52.090 --> 05:55.550
in your business. I think there will be ways
05:55.600 --> 05:59.642
that these companies will glam onto these technologies and offer kind
05:59.656 --> 06:02.522
of a hybrid model, but we haven't seen that yet.
06:02.716 --> 06:06.494
Where you have it's convenient to have Google provide you
06:06.532 --> 06:10.118
this, but Google is not going to look at certain things, even though
06:10.144 --> 06:13.634
they say that they're not looking. They may in
06:13.672 --> 06:17.298
other realms with these realms, you may get something a little more semi
06:17.334 --> 06:19.060
private than you have today.
06:20.650 --> 06:24.002
And then identity masking it actually is a way
06:24.076 --> 06:27.894
to perform things in the digital
06:28.062 --> 06:31.182
money world without really showing
06:31.206 --> 06:34.478
your identity. You're not a user who has an account at
06:34.504 --> 06:38.702
a bank with a name and a Social Security number. This is really different.
06:38.896 --> 06:42.638
This is more like an on screen username that
06:42.664 --> 06:46.262
you came up with is tied to sudo sort
06:46.276 --> 06:49.518
of account number. And it couldn't be tied to a wallet
06:49.554 --> 06:53.200
that knows a little bit more about you. But none of those things
06:53.770 --> 06:57.434
are connected in a way that shares data. That way
06:57.472 --> 07:00.974
they're kind of siloed. So that can be good and bad, of course.
07:01.012 --> 07:05.270
Right. If you mask your identity, you might have some government problems,
07:05.440 --> 07:09.280
tax problems. You might be hiding drug money. Right.
07:09.970 --> 07:13.886
So overall, what is blockchain? Blockchain tech
07:13.948 --> 07:17.778
actually allows multiple parties to transact in a peer to peer manner.
07:17.934 --> 07:21.306
And this is truly without a third party
07:21.378 --> 07:24.786
bank or government or company entity overseeing that peer
07:24.798 --> 07:28.622
to peer network. If you have an email account that is owned by Google,
07:28.696 --> 07:32.054
Google can oversee all of that. They try not to look into that.
07:32.092 --> 07:35.510
They don't capture that data appropriately and
07:35.620 --> 07:39.194
mine it because it's your personal email. You're using
07:39.232 --> 07:42.314
your quotes, right? I am.
07:42.472 --> 07:45.746
Because they have access to it. What they're doing with it,
07:45.748 --> 07:49.002
they're not telling us. Right, right. And that's
07:49.026 --> 07:52.674
all the cost of doing business as a consumer
07:52.722 --> 07:55.778
who wants ease of use. Right. I want Google to set this up for me.
07:55.804 --> 07:59.282
I want Facebook to set this up for me because I don't have the
07:59.296 --> 08:02.162
time to figure it out myself. I just want the account and I just want
08:02.176 --> 08:06.110
to do the things associated with the account. And that's very traditional
08:06.850 --> 08:10.170
and it's very consumer forward and convenient.
08:10.230 --> 08:14.982
But there are some issues with that pop up and blockchain
08:15.066 --> 08:18.134
is a way to solve some of those issues
08:18.292 --> 08:22.130
by decentralizing that account entirely
08:22.870 --> 08:27.030
by it's immutable, which basically means it's unchangeable
08:27.090 --> 08:30.890
over time. If you do a transaction, you can't undo that
08:30.940 --> 08:34.694
transaction. If you pay somebody cryptocurrency using
08:34.732 --> 08:38.094
a blockchain technology, it gets time stamped
08:38.142 --> 08:41.330
and logged in the blockchain. And to
08:41.380 --> 08:45.014
undo that, that person has to pay you back in
08:45.052 --> 08:49.122
yet another transaction which gets verified and timestamp
08:49.146 --> 08:52.298
and put in the blockchain. But you cannot modify and
08:52.324 --> 08:55.926
change that blockchain by removing it's just additive.
08:56.118 --> 09:00.066
That's very interesting from
09:00.128 --> 09:04.218
a security standpoint, because that means in
09:04.244 --> 09:07.160
order to actually hack that,
09:07.550 --> 09:10.350
if you're going to change one block in the chain,
09:11.750 --> 09:15.450
everyone else in there would immediately know that that had been tampered with
09:15.500 --> 09:19.834
because you're passing these chains around in order to verify
09:20.002 --> 09:23.442
transactions. And so if hackers wanted to actually corrupt a
09:23.456 --> 09:27.414
blockchain system, they would actually need to change every block in the chain and
09:27.452 --> 09:31.270
change that across all the distributed versions of that chain,
09:31.450 --> 09:35.406
because one piece of blockchain is let's look
09:35.468 --> 09:39.226
at the network of people. Let's create a ledger.
09:39.298 --> 09:42.958
Let's use a hash to let people connect to that ledger, and let's
09:42.994 --> 09:47.314
log in that ledger everything that goes on. And in order to approve
09:47.422 --> 09:51.198
everything that goes on in that ledger, we want some sort of unanimous or some
09:51.224 --> 09:54.620
sort of quorum amongst our members that say this can happen.
09:55.190 --> 09:58.402
And so because of that quorum and that distribution,
09:58.486 --> 10:02.178
this is super secure. The other piece of
10:02.204 --> 10:05.694
this is blockchain is programmable. And that
10:05.732 --> 10:09.594
means it's actually got programs stored within
10:09.632 --> 10:13.254
the blockchain that execute basically when
10:13.292 --> 10:16.822
predetermined conditions are met. So you can imagine that there's
10:16.846 --> 10:20.934
probably a lot of inventions coming down the pike about that. Where I
10:20.972 --> 10:23.586
have an algorithm. It runs this way. Oh, by the way, I put it in
10:23.588 --> 10:27.860
the blockchain. Right. So that makes it kind of patentably interesting
10:28.370 --> 10:32.182
until it doesn't. Right. Until everyone's doing that. Like AI
10:32.206 --> 10:33.740
and ML. Yes.
10:35.870 --> 10:39.046
There's a unanimousness to this. Like I indicated,
10:39.118 --> 10:42.810
all network participants really agree to the validity of each record
10:42.860 --> 10:46.974
in the blockchain. And I can get into this later. But part
10:47.012 --> 10:51.018
of what that looks like is proof of work. And if
10:51.044 --> 10:54.462
I'm confirming that particular things and I
10:54.476 --> 10:57.822
don't have to confirm it as a user, but my account would confirm it by
10:57.896 --> 11:01.626
automatic comparison. So if I'm participating in that
11:01.688 --> 11:05.182
unanimous checking process, I can get paid by proof
11:05.206 --> 11:08.382
of work, which is just a minor little amount.
11:08.516 --> 11:11.946
But it means that I am part of the network. I am approving in
11:11.948 --> 11:17.842
the network, and I am continuing
11:17.866 --> 11:19.110
to use the network.
11:21.110 --> 11:24.426
The other part of this, I think I called this out as well.
11:24.488 --> 11:28.640
It's distributed. So this is a digital ledger technology.
11:28.970 --> 11:33.118
And a digital ledger technology can be anything from an Excel file
11:33.154 --> 11:37.290
to a list of cryptographically curated
11:38.690 --> 11:42.690
data. And the way they use this and distribute this
11:42.740 --> 11:46.222
is interesting because it really does go to every member of the network,
11:46.306 --> 11:49.554
every peer in the peer to peer network. Right. And they
11:49.592 --> 11:53.862
do that instead of passing this upward to a Google
11:53.936 --> 11:56.780
or a Facebook or a Twitter to verify things.
11:58.370 --> 12:01.758
And the other thing is anonymous. Like I said, they don't know your
12:01.784 --> 12:04.770
identity. Your username can be some pseudonym.
12:05.450 --> 12:09.140
It does not have to be you as a person. It could also be
12:09.650 --> 12:13.098
personas. Right. So maybe I have a work persona and
12:13.184 --> 12:16.782
a life persona. Right. This is my
12:16.796 --> 12:20.818
personal email and this is my work email. And they both have different personas
12:20.974 --> 12:23.120
when I access blockchain services.
12:23.930 --> 12:26.970
Okay. In that same vein, what is cryptocurrency?
12:27.290 --> 12:31.222
So cryptocurrency is also decentralized in that it uses
12:31.306 --> 12:35.058
blockchain and it does pass around kind
12:35.084 --> 12:39.778
of the idea of, is this okay to make this transaction?
12:39.934 --> 12:43.820
Can I transfer this to this person?
12:44.810 --> 12:48.320
Are they trustworthy? Are they able to
12:48.650 --> 12:52.062
confirm that they are part of this network and that they have an account or
12:52.076 --> 12:55.638
they have a digital wallet, right. And so you've seen
12:55.664 --> 13:00.226
these, I put it just a quick flip up there. Litecoin Ethereum
13:00.298 --> 13:03.140
coin, Bitcoin, ripple coin. There's many more.
13:03.770 --> 13:07.038
But in the end, cryptocurrency is data with a
13:07.064 --> 13:10.100
value and an address. It is no more than that.
13:11.150 --> 13:14.478
It has a financial value because of how that it
13:14.504 --> 13:17.840
was set up. But it's data with a value and an address.
13:19.430 --> 13:23.038
Transactions completed using crypto are maintained
13:23.134 --> 13:26.398
in a public ledger. So a blockchain.
13:26.554 --> 13:30.378
And because of that, they're super secure. They are checked and
13:30.404 --> 13:34.554
rechecked and they are very hard to hack. So the
13:34.652 --> 13:38.350
issue with people saying, oh, it's fake currency and it's
13:38.410 --> 13:42.438
really not like the same as cash or the underwritten gold of
13:42.464 --> 13:45.438
the US Treasury, that is true.
13:45.524 --> 13:49.100
But it has a different way of being
13:50.330 --> 13:53.818
confirmed in a different way of being restauranty. And it's
13:53.854 --> 13:57.378
just a different exchange mechanism. So as soon as we start to
13:57.404 --> 14:01.074
see it that way and see it used for certain industries that way,
14:01.172 --> 14:04.402
it may become a little bit more mainstream and understood
14:04.486 --> 14:08.060
in what we are doing. But as a side,
14:08.390 --> 14:11.782
in order to get cryptocurrency, you have to have a digital wallet.
14:11.926 --> 14:15.058
And in order to get cryptocurrency in that digital wallet,
14:15.094 --> 14:19.890
you actually use real money. Okay. So you can purchase cryptocurrency
14:21.290 --> 14:24.210
mining, though, for a while, too. I know how common that is now.
14:24.260 --> 14:28.174
But there was mining, though, too, right? Yes. You can buy certain equipment
14:28.222 --> 14:31.618
and it would essentially mine Bitcoin
14:31.654 --> 14:35.478
or whatever. Yes. So the other piece of that mining that
14:35.504 --> 14:38.974
Ashley says that could be from actively
14:39.022 --> 14:42.810
mining something and problem solving to get paid in
14:42.860 --> 14:45.030
tokens or in cryptocurrency coins.
14:45.410 --> 14:49.038
And another piece of that mining could be if
14:49.064 --> 14:52.374
I'm going to confirm what's going on in
14:52.472 --> 14:56.070
the ledger itself, maybe I'm going to solve a small
14:56.120 --> 14:59.898
puzzle piece and then for solving that,
14:59.924 --> 15:03.534
I will get paid a small rate, a pittance of
15:03.632 --> 15:06.858
crypto coin for doing that. So there's other
15:06.884 --> 15:10.002
ways to make money. But truly, if you want to trade it or you
15:10.016 --> 15:14.038
want to do something in large value, you usually exchange
15:14.134 --> 15:17.962
real money into cryptocurrency and it's in the stock
15:17.986 --> 15:22.074
market. So it can change the value can change just
15:22.112 --> 15:25.446
like real money and then
15:25.508 --> 15:29.338
financial transactions performed without the help of a third party. So again, no banks,
15:29.374 --> 15:33.066
no government. If you're using an application,
15:33.248 --> 15:36.822
it's really not a company
15:36.896 --> 15:40.458
owned application for the purpose of owning what you are using it for.
15:40.484 --> 15:43.350
So they don't own your crypto. They don't own your money, right.
15:43.460 --> 15:47.178
They don't own anything that means money.
15:47.264 --> 15:50.778
So we'll cover it in a second. But NFT would be
15:50.924 --> 15:54.790
kind of a version of cryptocurrency that isn't
15:54.970 --> 15:57.800
financial per se.
15:59.210 --> 16:03.178
So cryptocurrency features, you can imagine the pros or the secure
16:03.274 --> 16:06.882
transactions. No permission needed to use. You just download an app and
16:06.896 --> 16:09.500
you're able to use it. Get a wallet. Right.
16:09.950 --> 16:13.318
They're fast. They're like under two minutes beginning
16:13.354 --> 16:17.230
to end anywhere in the world. The locations of the participants
16:17.290 --> 16:20.540
is just completely irrelevant. You can do this with anyone in the world.
16:21.410 --> 16:25.374
Your identity can be hidden in the same way and there is no
16:25.412 --> 16:28.890
physical form. It is all virtual and no central banking system.
16:29.060 --> 16:32.634
And some of these are kind of as of yet. I can see maybe
16:32.672 --> 16:36.282
we would get some hybrids out there in the future, but this
16:36.296 --> 16:37.640
is how it works today.
16:39.470 --> 16:43.330
And of course cons, they're completely irreversible.
16:43.510 --> 16:46.518
You do get one kind of trigger that says,
16:46.544 --> 16:50.490
Are you sure? Right, if you want to create this transaction or perform
16:50.540 --> 16:53.830
this transaction. But once you've done that, they're irreversible.
16:53.950 --> 16:56.766
And like I said, you have to get that other person to pay you back.
16:56.828 --> 17:00.560
If you've purchased something and you want the money back, that sort of thing.
17:02.910 --> 17:06.478
There is a public transparency of the transaction details and
17:06.504 --> 17:11.230
it isn't in full and it isn't easily kind of discerned.
17:11.730 --> 17:16.430
A distributed ledger is public. It usually is just printed
17:16.490 --> 17:19.994
up to a server and it is publicly viewable
17:20.042 --> 17:23.782
and readable. But the beauty of it is you can't access it and do anything
17:23.856 --> 17:27.490
with it without the hash, which is just a piece,
17:27.660 --> 17:31.426
just a key that you can access the network itself with
17:31.548 --> 17:35.662
and without the trust of the network. So even though you can see numbers and
17:35.676 --> 17:39.058
data and things, you don't see what the transactions mean and what they
17:39.084 --> 17:42.646
actually did, it's just stored cryptographically, stored data,
17:42.708 --> 17:45.862
I guess. But if somebody could get
17:45.876 --> 17:48.898
a hold of that and figure out what you were doing with a lot of
17:48.924 --> 17:52.354
effort, they may be able to get in there
17:52.392 --> 17:56.086
and act like they are part of
17:56.268 --> 18:00.190
the network itself and that they are
18:00.240 --> 18:03.842
looking to provide pieces to the consensus.
18:03.986 --> 18:07.874
And if they do it in a way that is against three quarters
18:07.922 --> 18:11.638
of the people there, they might influence outcomes. So if they put
18:11.664 --> 18:15.154
in there, I don't trust this transaction nine times a day.
18:15.312 --> 18:18.842
They might be blocking transactions that are true and good, but they're
18:18.926 --> 18:22.462
blocking them from occurring, which could be a problem, right?
18:22.476 --> 18:26.030
You're blocking payments from happening. You're blocking transactions
18:26.090 --> 18:29.690
from occurring like they should. There are ways to influence
18:29.750 --> 18:33.242
networks like that as being part of the network and being just a malicious
18:33.326 --> 18:37.570
actor. And you can do that by seeing
18:37.620 --> 18:40.978
this public piece and guessing at what it
18:41.004 --> 18:44.458
would be for who's using it, and then trying to be part of that
18:44.484 --> 18:48.154
group. So there's a lot of theft of
18:48.192 --> 18:52.346
identity and just distrust
18:52.418 --> 18:55.922
involved there with anybody new coming in. And that's
18:55.946 --> 18:58.906
why there's all these checks, to make sure people are part of the system,
18:58.968 --> 19:02.278
that they are appropriately vetted and that
19:02.304 --> 19:05.520
they have the correct hash keys, anything, right.
19:06.870 --> 19:10.274
And then the other piece of user base behavior, the tracing
19:10.322 --> 19:13.510
and tracking, it's kind of difficult and it could be
19:13.620 --> 19:17.002
a Con. Just if there's theft, if there
19:17.016 --> 19:20.578
are problems going on, tax evasion, things like
19:20.604 --> 19:24.374
that. And by the way, if you make money in cryptocurrency,
19:24.422 --> 19:27.600
you do need to put that on your tax form.
19:27.990 --> 19:31.200
Well, I don't think there's any problem with that right now.
19:32.070 --> 19:34.140
Yeah, nobody's making any money.
19:35.850 --> 19:38.698
Okay. And I alluded to this a little bit, but here's a picture graph that
19:38.724 --> 19:42.430
just helps show you how changes are made on a blockchain.
19:43.170 --> 19:46.678
So at the far left person a wants to make
19:46.704 --> 19:50.230
a change to the blockchain. They create that change,
19:50.340 --> 19:54.062
they use the hash to do it, and this change will create a new block.
19:54.206 --> 19:57.758
This block is actually broadcast all the computers on the distributed network
19:57.794 --> 20:01.438
from peer to peer there. And those computers approve or disapprove the
20:01.464 --> 20:04.654
change if it's unanimous or if it's set up to be
20:04.752 --> 20:08.662
a consensus rules where you have a
20:08.676 --> 20:11.398
good majority or whatnot, depending on how it's set up,
20:11.544 --> 20:15.142
they approve it, and then the new block is actually added to
20:15.156 --> 20:19.478
the chain and it's permanent. So it's really straightforward.
20:19.634 --> 20:22.690
It's very clear on how this happens,
20:22.860 --> 20:26.326
where you will get lost when you get an inventor reading this stuff to you
20:26.388 --> 20:30.158
is in the data and in all of the rigmarole
20:30.194 --> 20:33.514
that goes into the cryptography and the back and forth going
20:33.552 --> 20:35.962
on, it's usually not clear.
20:36.156 --> 20:39.478
So when I pull inventions like this, and I've only done three
20:39.504 --> 20:43.042
or four myself, but I have been very motivated to
20:43.056 --> 20:46.558
say, let's go through a flow chart, let's do
20:46.584 --> 20:50.218
a transaction. What happens in your system so that I can see
20:50.364 --> 20:53.758
if it's different than a typical blockchain system and so that
20:53.784 --> 20:57.058
I can see where each piece of data is
20:57.144 --> 21:00.754
being used and how much importance put
21:00.792 --> 21:04.042
on it. Because if it's just a hash, it's just a
21:04.056 --> 21:07.874
hash. And if you haven't created any interesting data structure
21:07.922 --> 21:11.402
that's new in the industry, I don't care. We'll just call it a hash
21:11.426 --> 21:15.358
and be done with it. But if there's something new about it, it's another piece
21:15.384 --> 21:19.078
of invention that we have to dig into. So by making them
21:19.104 --> 21:22.198
go through a flow chart themselves and go
21:22.224 --> 21:25.920
through one transaction manually, it helps that process.
21:29.430 --> 21:33.214
One of the applications I had written years ago ended up with so
21:33.312 --> 21:37.082
many figures in it, just showing how the data moved
21:37.106 --> 21:40.958
around. And it was 2019.
21:41.054 --> 21:44.446
So it wasn't brand new crypto and blockchain tech,
21:44.508 --> 21:48.360
but it was newer and newish. So we didn't know
21:48.690 --> 21:52.294
what would be interesting and what would be patentable and what was
21:52.332 --> 21:56.254
out there. It was just too difficult at the time to figure out the
21:56.292 --> 21:59.638
search structure and the prior art and who was
21:59.664 --> 22:02.782
doing what. A lot of it was done in China first.
22:02.856 --> 22:06.370
And so you've got a lot of Chinese art that isn't available quite yet
22:06.420 --> 22:09.610
because it was in public. So it was kind of messy.
22:12.010 --> 22:15.026
That first one is not through the patent system. So I have no idea if
22:15.028 --> 22:17.800
I did it right, did it wrong, can fix it, whatever.
22:20.110 --> 22:24.638
Okay. And so a cryptocurrency coin example here to
22:24.664 --> 22:28.298
push this through a blockchain with crypto, just so you understand kind of
22:28.324 --> 22:31.538
how that could happen. You would start with the
22:31.564 --> 22:34.446
initial creation of a coin, like a Bitcoin,
22:34.578 --> 22:37.734
and every transaction would be confirmed and stored in a ledger.
22:37.782 --> 22:42.054
So a blockchain, and that involves identical
22:42.222 --> 22:45.498
copies of that transaction that are distributed among
22:45.534 --> 22:48.650
peers, maintaining this public blockchain.
22:49.090 --> 22:53.090
And it's not just the transaction, it's the entire ledger every
22:53.140 --> 22:56.680
time, by the way, that goes out, typically. And it's large,
22:58.450 --> 23:01.754
but the way digital data
23:01.792 --> 23:05.294
works today, it's no big deal that it's that large, but it is
23:05.332 --> 23:07.730
large and it gets larger with each transaction.
23:10.310 --> 23:14.482
That actually public ledger, though it doesn't include information about real world identities
23:14.566 --> 23:18.762
of owners of the coin. It's just basically an address,
23:18.956 --> 23:22.554
kind of similar to an account number, but it's like a data address,
23:22.712 --> 23:26.660
and it's a balance of what the coin is for each account.
23:27.230 --> 23:31.378
And then the digital wallets themselves actually use encrypted electronic
23:31.414 --> 23:35.350
signatures, and they serve as kind of the cryptographic proof
23:35.530 --> 23:38.658
that this transaction originated at this owner of the
23:38.684 --> 23:43.374
wallet. Right. And then to
23:43.412 --> 23:46.938
record transaction to the public ledger. This is actually getting into
23:46.964 --> 23:50.274
the mining aspect. So miners are really
23:50.372 --> 23:53.838
known as kind of decentralized computing systems that are
23:53.864 --> 23:57.390
participating to support the public ledger. And that
23:57.440 --> 24:01.890
means everyone on the network could be a minor and
24:01.940 --> 24:05.674
they would approve the transaction by working to solve some sort of increasingly
24:05.722 --> 24:07.100
complex problem.
24:08.870 --> 24:12.298
And the first minor would solve a puzzle and add a block representing
24:12.334 --> 24:16.126
the transaction. You can see how it can get kind of complex
24:16.198 --> 24:19.974
with what you have to do in order to mine. And there are
24:20.012 --> 24:23.838
different ways of mining that's just one way. And then
24:23.864 --> 24:26.478
once the block is mined and added to the ledger itself,
24:26.564 --> 24:29.986
everything's been approved, and all conforming transactions
24:30.058 --> 24:34.278
are permanent. The miner who actually helped to
24:34.364 --> 24:38.250
approve the transaction is rewarded with a small transaction fee.
24:38.570 --> 24:41.286
And that is the proof of work.
24:41.468 --> 24:44.938
Okay. So if you hear proof of work or you hear proof of stake,
24:45.094 --> 24:48.402
proof of stake would be I've bought in enough that I am a
24:48.416 --> 24:51.822
member and I have a stake in this network. So there are a couple of
24:51.836 --> 24:54.810
ways to do that, and you'll see these through the industry.
24:55.910 --> 24:59.406
Okay. Next definition. And I hope last for you.
24:59.528 --> 25:02.938
What is an NFP? That's a non bungable token.
25:03.094 --> 25:07.042
And an NFP could be a piece of unique digital artwork,
25:07.126 --> 25:10.726
a domain name, a rare book, an ingame item,
25:10.858 --> 25:13.914
a unique sneaker in a limited run fashion line,
25:14.072 --> 25:17.698
an event ticket or coupon, an essay, a digital
25:17.794 --> 25:22.530
collectible of sorts, like a bitmap, a unique bitmap,
25:23.030 --> 25:26.986
but basically it's non fengible.
25:27.058 --> 25:30.522
And it's a nonfungible token because it's one
25:30.536 --> 25:33.774
of a kind. It represents a real world item or like
25:33.812 --> 25:37.698
digital content. And it also uses blockchain to digitally record
25:37.784 --> 25:41.838
transactions that occur with NFT. The main difference
25:41.924 --> 25:45.174
between an NFT and a cryptocurrency, though, there's no
25:45.212 --> 25:48.418
fungible trade amongst NFPs because they are unique
25:48.454 --> 25:52.306
representations of assets and no one NFP
25:52.378 --> 25:54.630
is exactly the same as another NFT.
25:55.430 --> 25:59.430
In cryptocurrency, one Bitcoin is exactly the same
25:59.480 --> 26:03.150
as another Bitcoin, and that just doesn't happen with NFT.
26:03.530 --> 26:07.066
So this becomes yet another way of trade.
26:07.258 --> 26:11.202
Okay. Yet another system of
26:11.336 --> 26:15.274
protecting and trading these items. On the left, the digital
26:15.322 --> 26:18.260
artwork, the domain name, a book. Right.
26:19.670 --> 26:23.358
Something, though, it looks like you are talking about this, because I think this
26:23.384 --> 26:26.958
is a frequently misrepresented bit about NFT is
26:26.984 --> 26:30.510
that you're not putting the item on the blockchain, you're putting
26:30.560 --> 26:33.606
a receipt on the blockchain that indicates something
26:33.668 --> 26:38.134
else that is often not necessarily supported.
26:38.242 --> 26:41.574
And so, sure, I've got a fancy thing on a blockchain that
26:41.612 --> 26:44.850
says I own this JPEG on a server somewhere.
26:45.830 --> 26:49.758
Yes. That is fundamentally different from having the shoe in
26:49.784 --> 26:53.538
real life. That is fundamentally different from having the JPEG on
26:53.564 --> 26:57.450
your hard drive. Because also, if you have that Jpg up
26:57.500 --> 27:01.074
on a public server that anyone can go look at, anyone can go
27:01.112 --> 27:04.580
right click or screenshot the image and keep it themselves.
27:05.270 --> 27:09.286
The only thing you're actually paying for is a receipt,
27:09.478 --> 27:12.894
not the thing itself. Yes. So you can imagine maybe
27:12.932 --> 27:15.786
like original artwork way back in the day,
27:15.968 --> 27:18.330
if we had Monets as NFPs,
27:19.130 --> 27:22.818
they would maybe grow even more so in cost
27:22.904 --> 27:27.022
and in value, because you could use that NFT
27:27.106 --> 27:30.310
structure to authenticate in an easier
27:30.370 --> 27:34.054
way than having the Museum involved. In a cheaper way than having the Museum involved
27:34.102 --> 27:36.500
and anybody else who would have to verify. Right.
27:37.130 --> 27:40.582
Okay. They are also deployed as individual chains
27:40.606 --> 27:44.074
of ownership of smart contracts, and they track a specific asset.
27:44.122 --> 27:48.006
So that's what I mean. If you track the artwork over time, you might
27:48.068 --> 27:51.750
create more value of that artwork because it is an original.
27:53.870 --> 27:57.706
And like Dan said, it shows chains of ownership.
27:57.838 --> 28:01.198
It shows the data that you own this piece, but it doesn't
28:01.234 --> 28:04.686
mean you physically have it in your possession. Yeah.
28:04.808 --> 28:08.326
And that's also where I'm going to protest the provenance,
28:08.398 --> 28:11.778
because, sure, you can make a digital receipt that says, I own
28:11.804 --> 28:15.802
a Monet, but then somebody can go steal the monetary.
28:15.826 --> 28:19.278
Yes. And you lose it.
28:19.304 --> 28:21.380
Right. Because it's stuff.
28:22.970 --> 28:26.578
Okay. So before we go back to those three concepts,
28:26.614 --> 28:29.814
I wanted to just give you this evolution of the Web. I thought this was
28:29.852 --> 28:33.318
interesting. This is from a podcast, The Tim Ferris Show.
28:33.464 --> 28:36.702
And it was interesting to see how the web had changed over time and how
28:36.716 --> 28:39.980
they categorized it. I really never categorized it.
28:41.390 --> 28:45.414
So Web 1.0 was basically 1990 to about four.
28:45.572 --> 28:49.386
It was open platform. Nobody really owned it or controlled it
28:49.508 --> 28:53.120
outside. Maybe the government. Right. And started as a government thing.
28:53.810 --> 28:57.258
And products and content were limited. There wasn't a lot of
28:57.284 --> 29:00.140
blogs and a lot of user created content.
29:01.430 --> 29:04.674
This is from a magazine. And I put it up here in a digital form
29:04.712 --> 29:08.002
on the web. And the advertisements on the Internet were banned
29:08.026 --> 29:11.050
at the time. And you have very few content creators.
29:11.110 --> 29:14.840
It just wasn't what it is today.
29:16.610 --> 29:20.370
Okay. And today this is about 2004 to now
29:20.420 --> 29:24.378
and maybe a few years from now. This is open and closed platform
29:24.464 --> 29:28.580
options. And what that means is in an open platform option.
29:29.030 --> 29:32.802
I've chosen to purchase my domain and
29:32.816 --> 29:36.402
I run things from my domain. I might use a
29:36.416 --> 29:39.560
Google or a Microsoft server setup to
29:40.310 --> 29:43.820
host, but I don't use Google services and I don't use
29:44.630 --> 29:48.486
Google's platform. So I'm not using Gmail, I'm not using Facebook to provide
29:48.548 --> 29:52.294
content. I'm not using Blogger as a basis
29:52.342 --> 29:56.082
to write my blog. I have got my own domain. The other side of
29:56.096 --> 29:59.838
that is a closed platform, and that is actually using
29:59.924 --> 30:03.406
some of the bigger names out of complete and total ease
30:03.538 --> 30:07.114
to be able to upload content quickly and easily
30:07.162 --> 30:10.220
and formatted without a whole lot of effort on the user part.
30:11.630 --> 30:14.818
And right now we are in the age of rich Internet applications.
30:14.854 --> 30:18.366
We've got interactive Google Maps, social media,
30:18.428 --> 30:22.134
Semantic Web. And in the future, we're looking at this Web
30:22.172 --> 30:25.246
3.0. This is something that is underway.
30:25.318 --> 30:28.834
You do see a little bit of this these days. It is likely
30:28.882 --> 30:32.730
going to be open platform, and it may or may not use blockchain.
30:33.230 --> 30:36.858
This decentralizes a lot of things. This takes the data
30:36.944 --> 30:40.774
put up there owned by users and data generators and fewer
30:40.822 --> 30:44.226
large companies. And another way
30:44.228 --> 30:48.138
to look at this. I put this together because I thought this was
30:48.164 --> 30:51.462
interesting, too. Web 1.0 was a read only.
30:51.596 --> 30:54.486
You had your Netscapes, your AOL, your Microsoft, Google,
30:54.548 --> 30:57.654
and it wasn't a true read only. You could make some changes, but it was
30:57.692 --> 31:01.362
typically read only. Web 2.0 is kind of a read write,
31:01.436 --> 31:04.954
and that's where we are now. You've got big Google, Apple, Facebook,
31:05.002 --> 31:08.742
Spotify, et cetera, Twitter. They own large
31:08.816 --> 31:12.078
portions of market share for what
31:12.104 --> 31:15.666
people are doing on the web and Web 3.0.
31:15.788 --> 31:18.862
This will likely be open and users will be able to build and orchestrate
31:18.886 --> 31:22.402
their own platforms and content a little bit easier. And they'll
31:22.426 --> 31:25.498
keep this out of the big data CEO power structure,
31:25.654 --> 31:29.434
which means data hoarding, narratives and censorship can be owned and operated
31:29.482 --> 31:33.402
by the people. So we'll see where we go. But I thought
31:33.596 --> 31:35.240
the evolution was interesting.
31:36.590 --> 31:40.114
So I have a question for the group. What does this Web evolution
31:40.222 --> 31:44.010
blockchain and NFT tech mean for IP ownership?
31:44.330 --> 31:48.018
Will we see some sort of change in the patent system for inventions that
31:48.044 --> 31:50.190
involve digital content and software?
31:51.590 --> 31:54.486
Are we going to see new protection art units? Are we going to see a
31:54.488 --> 31:58.078
new type of category outside of patents and copywriting? Dan,
31:58.114 --> 31:59.900
I bet you have an opinion on this.
32:05.370 --> 32:08.520
He may be stepped away. No, sorry.
32:10.110 --> 32:13.942
I'll be honest, I had tuned out for just a moment.
32:14.076 --> 32:17.134
Oh, no, for texting me, so I wasn't quite sure he called me out.
32:17.172 --> 32:20.820
Now I feel like I need to say something intelligent. I wasn't back
32:22.810 --> 32:26.858
in there. I'm sorry. And there's a lot of data there too, so I know
32:27.004 --> 32:30.518
it's getting late. No, I apologize. I don't mean to call
32:30.544 --> 32:34.034
you out on that, but my thought was, are you
32:34.072 --> 32:37.554
thinking we might see some changes in the patent
32:37.602 --> 32:41.490
system around the blockchain and NFP property ownership
32:41.550 --> 32:45.014
technology I had up here? Maybe new
32:45.052 --> 32:48.242
protection units, or maybe we would have a new category outside of patents and
32:48.256 --> 32:52.094
copywriting. Go ahead. Yeah,
32:52.252 --> 32:56.090
I see this. A new art unit I think makes
32:56.140 --> 33:00.054
definite sense with just the sheer market interest and number of people filing
33:00.102 --> 33:03.722
stuff on it. It would behoove the patent office to have and
33:03.736 --> 33:07.240
I'm honestly would be surprised if they don't have a new art unit already
33:07.870 --> 33:11.430
with the interest of it additional forms of intellectual
33:11.490 --> 33:14.714
property in response to this
33:14.752 --> 33:18.618
type of stuff. Like do we now have something Besides patents and Copyright that's
33:18.654 --> 33:23.746
specific to entries
33:23.938 --> 33:26.550
on the spreadsheet that is a blockchain?
33:28.430 --> 33:33.762
I'm not sure. Yeah, well, maybe kind
33:33.776 --> 33:37.398
of a transactional thing might be something different because
33:37.424 --> 33:41.118
you don't get a Copyright and
33:41.144 --> 33:44.958
I guess you could still kind of print maybe Ms. Right, because right
33:44.984 --> 33:49.050
now the Copyright system requires hard copies of things.
33:49.100 --> 33:52.734
I guess you can maybe still put NFT on a
33:52.892 --> 33:56.350
disk. The NFT is just a receipt.
33:56.470 --> 34:00.018
And so with the Copyright. So cool.
34:00.104 --> 34:03.502
You've got a unique image. I've got an NFT that's
34:03.526 --> 34:07.830
just somewhere on a spreadsheet that says my
34:07.880 --> 34:11.622
username string is associated with this bit of data
34:11.696 --> 34:16.158
that indicates the receipt towards we
34:16.184 --> 34:20.490
all just sort of agree that it indicates a receipt towards this unique image.
34:21.050 --> 34:25.854
I don't see how that is anything beyond like
34:25.892 --> 34:29.658
regular. If I wanted to go now print a bunch of copies of
34:29.744 --> 34:33.090
that and distribute that and sell those images,
34:33.470 --> 34:36.798
I don't quite see how that's anything independent from do
34:36.824 --> 34:40.662
I have the Copyright? I mean, perhaps you
34:40.676 --> 34:44.142
could write a human law that says a
34:44.156 --> 34:47.946
national law that says the
34:48.008 --> 34:51.658
people acknowledge this particular distributed
34:51.694 --> 34:55.940
ledger as indicating towards
34:56.750 --> 35:00.810
Copyright. So if you want to have the Copyright for
35:00.920 --> 35:04.534
a given piece of work, you must have somehow,
35:04.582 --> 35:08.454
but then you get over the whole anonymity of
35:08.492 --> 35:11.646
what the cryptography of the usernames is supposed to be.
35:11.828 --> 35:15.270
That okay, you must publicly let us know who you are,
35:15.380 --> 35:19.206
and you publicly must have visible on this blockchain your
35:19.268 --> 35:23.430
receipt that has a certain indication towards a given work of art.
35:23.540 --> 35:27.862
And if you satisfy that, then we all agree that you have Copyright
35:27.946 --> 35:30.870
towards the object indicated in your receipt.
35:31.670 --> 35:36.102
And then I don't see how that's any more helpful than just a
35:36.116 --> 35:39.450
Copyright. A Copyright. We the people agree
35:39.500 --> 35:42.980
to form a database that anyone can access
35:43.670 --> 35:47.180
of who owns the Copyright forgiven works of art,
35:48.530 --> 35:52.062
whether it's distributed or not. I think the bigger point
35:52.076 --> 35:56.010
that brings up, though, is that elements of Web
35:56.060 --> 35:59.958
Three are fundamentally in
35:59.984 --> 36:04.158
opposition to the
36:04.244 --> 36:08.046
general premise of the intellectual property system.
36:08.108 --> 36:11.838
Right. Because, as Dan points out, the whole intellectual property system is based
36:11.864 --> 36:15.802
on the idea that in exchange for some limited monopoly,
36:15.946 --> 36:19.758
some ownership. Right. Whatever I give
36:19.784 --> 36:23.206
to the public knowledge and share knowledge
36:23.278 --> 36:27.702
and information technology, whatever with the public in
36:27.716 --> 36:31.590
exchange for those rights. But the whole essence of aspects of Web
36:31.640 --> 36:34.954
Three, the blockchain elements,
36:35.062 --> 36:39.054
NFPs and things like that is all around anonymity or at least
36:39.152 --> 36:41.900
as much anonymity as you want to have with it.
36:42.890 --> 36:46.098
It seems like those two elements are kind of in opposition to
36:46.124 --> 36:50.000
one another. It's really interesting.
36:50.570 --> 36:54.462
I'm not a Copyright attorney. I wonder if
36:54.476 --> 36:58.150
an artist makes a physical painting
36:58.270 --> 37:02.118
their own painting, and then they sell that painting, the original painting to
37:02.144 --> 37:05.394
someone owns that painting. Can the owner of that
37:05.432 --> 37:08.900
painting make prints of that painting and then sell it?
37:09.470 --> 37:13.578
So does buying an original painting confer the Copyright to you?
37:13.724 --> 37:17.058
Or is the Copyright still owned by the owner or by
37:17.084 --> 37:20.338
the creator? By the artist owned by the creator.
37:20.374 --> 37:24.090
Because unless there's like a true assignment, if you think about it like I buy
37:24.140 --> 37:27.954
Cat and a Hat, that doesn't mean that I can take
37:27.992 --> 37:31.902
Cat in the Hat and decide to make a
37:31.916 --> 37:35.120
million copies of it and go sell. Right? Right.
37:36.350 --> 37:40.342
Some kind of work for higher provision or some kind of actual assignment.
37:40.486 --> 37:43.758
Right. Even if Dr. Seuss wrote down Cat
37:43.784 --> 37:46.878
in the Hat on some pieces of paper and you bought the original, doesn't mean
37:46.904 --> 37:50.550
that you can copy it and sell it. Right. Same thing,
37:50.660 --> 37:54.162
I think probably from logic would go from it
37:54.236 --> 37:58.002
would follow for an NFT, if you're buying an original piece of
37:58.016 --> 38:01.482
digital art, that doesn't give you the Copyright to it.
38:01.556 --> 38:06.982
Right? Right. If the
38:06.996 --> 38:10.860
creator of the work of art or the creative work,
38:12.210 --> 38:15.698
they can be copyrighted. But then again, they're also revealing
38:15.734 --> 38:19.306
who they are and the anonymity goes away assuming that they want to
38:19.308 --> 38:20.290
be anonymous.
38:23.950 --> 38:28.010
Digital art is infinitely reproducible
38:28.690 --> 38:32.526
to the easiest extreme. The fundamental difference between owning
38:32.658 --> 38:36.578
the Mona Lisa and a copy of the Mona Lisa is quite clear,
38:36.664 --> 38:40.120
I think, to all of us, because of the provenance and the history of
38:40.510 --> 38:44.006
the physical good that is the Mona Lisa versus a copy of
38:44.008 --> 38:47.618
the Mona Lisa. Right. Whereas it's just
38:47.644 --> 38:49.550
a JPEG or a PNG.
38:51.070 --> 38:54.578
It's an argument, I feel like, for and against NFT, because what
38:54.604 --> 38:58.442
NFPs do, in a way, is make it possible to have
38:58.516 --> 39:02.298
an original of a digital piece of art. Where otherwise
39:02.334 --> 39:05.990
what, are you going to sell someone's computer? No, but again, you need the
39:06.040 --> 39:09.302
art on. It doesn't make sense. You don't have the
39:09.436 --> 39:14.330
original. You have a receipt saying that I
39:14.380 --> 39:18.100
spent money towards this thing in a weird way. There is no
39:18.550 --> 39:19.610
original.
39:22.550 --> 39:26.362
I mean, this is my maybe naivete around the space because there's
39:26.386 --> 39:31.578
definitely some you
39:31.604 --> 39:35.490
have this receipt, but isn't there a way for you
39:35.540 --> 39:39.018
to view the thing that you have a receipt for, like even
39:39.044 --> 39:42.740
in some kind of digital, like in a digital wallet, you know what I mean?
39:43.250 --> 39:47.430
So putting the image itself on the blockchain would be
39:47.540 --> 39:50.922
absurdly. Wasteful a huge amount of data, slow everything
39:50.996 --> 39:54.978
down. So no one actually does that. What is commonly done is
39:55.004 --> 39:58.278
that there will be some sort of URL that can be readily or some
39:58.304 --> 40:01.782
string that can readily spit out just a link
40:01.916 --> 40:05.346
to some external hosting site, like room,
40:05.468 --> 40:09.850
essentially for you to view the thing except for it's on the public ledger
40:10.030 --> 40:13.378
so people can access it. And so also, you don't
40:13.414 --> 40:17.046
necessarily have control. You are trusting the
40:17.108 --> 40:21.006
host of the image that it will continue to be there.
40:21.188 --> 40:24.858
So hilariously. You could buy an NFT for something hosted on
40:24.884 --> 40:27.870
a site, you spend your money and then, oh,
40:27.920 --> 40:31.198
the company hosting it couldn't pay the server couldn't
40:31.234 --> 40:34.158
pay for the server space anymore. So it all gets pulled away.
40:34.304 --> 40:36.500
Now your URL indicates nothing.
40:38.150 --> 40:41.694
Yeah, I think this goes back to Kristen's first slide, pretty much, which is
40:41.732 --> 40:45.754
trust. You are trusting an artist,
40:45.802 --> 40:49.602
you're trusting the system that you're putting your money down and that
40:49.736 --> 40:53.454
everyone agrees that you own the quote, unquote original, whatever that
40:53.492 --> 40:56.878
means. You're right, Dan. Exactly. It's just a receipt. But there's
40:56.914 --> 41:00.260
this trust that's been built up and
41:01.010 --> 41:02.480
yeah, I don't know,
41:04.490 --> 41:09.550
a couple of random thoughts. I know we're almost done, but like cryptocurrency
41:09.610 --> 41:13.062
in general, there's a lot of people talking about it now. And what does it
41:13.076 --> 41:16.362
mean? What is it for and what is it really good for a lot of
41:16.376 --> 41:19.858
smart people, at least I don't have a super strong opinion
41:19.894 --> 41:23.478
either way. But a lot of smart people have said it's basically just the
41:23.504 --> 41:27.874
greater fool. There's no value inherent.
41:27.922 --> 41:31.326
There's no inherent value. And people argue back and forth about that.
41:31.448 --> 41:34.650
That's the real crux of the issue is their inherent value. So people
41:34.700 --> 41:38.430
argue about it. But NFTs and crypto, I think they're very
41:38.480 --> 41:43.054
interesting and sort of like revolutionary on one side from the economic
41:43.222 --> 41:46.746
kind of analysis of it. Like, what are these things really worth?
41:46.808 --> 41:50.214
Do they really have value? Do you really own something or not?
41:50.372 --> 41:53.482
From the patent side and the technology side, I actually think it's
41:53.506 --> 41:56.398
a lot more straightforward. You've got software,
41:56.554 --> 42:00.106
you've got encryption, you've got cryptography, you've got blockchain,
42:00.178 --> 42:04.254
you've got these real inventions, these real technical things that
42:04.292 --> 42:07.726
people are doing that you can look at and patent.
42:07.918 --> 42:11.514
So in that sense, no easier or
42:11.552 --> 42:14.960
harder than AI or ML or
42:15.650 --> 42:19.002
all the same issues with them. Not with 101,
42:19.076 --> 42:22.242
basically. Right. I think we'll be there for a
42:22.256 --> 42:26.434
crypto and blockchain. But I don't know, it's the controversy.
42:26.602 --> 42:29.418
If you will or the weirdness of them. I feel like it's more on the
42:29.444 --> 42:32.502
economic socioeconomic side of
42:32.516 --> 42:36.318
things, less on the technical and patent stuff that would
42:36.344 --> 42:39.786
be relevant for a patent. I think the one
42:39.848 --> 42:43.340
most interesting argument I've seen for
42:43.790 --> 42:47.038
NFTs, at least Cryptos and other Things NFT,
42:47.074 --> 42:50.878
is that it allows artists to potentially reap
42:50.914 --> 42:54.538
more benefit than they've historically been able to reap from their creative
42:54.574 --> 42:58.158
works. Right. Because people may be more willing to give
42:58.184 --> 43:02.062
them money in support of them through this mechanism.
43:02.146 --> 43:05.886
That's maybe more accessible or easier to find
43:05.948 --> 43:09.798
them than it would have otherwise been. And so I can
43:09.824 --> 43:12.934
now put my money and share my money with lots of different artists
43:12.982 --> 43:15.666
who I believe in support want to whatever.
43:15.848 --> 43:19.002
Whereas maybe they were less findable before.
43:19.076 --> 43:22.750
So that's an interesting aspect
43:22.810 --> 43:26.662
of the NFT. I'll say as someone who participates
43:26.746 --> 43:30.826
in a fair amount of online art production,
43:31.018 --> 43:34.102
publication discourse,
43:34.246 --> 43:37.794
exchange right now, NFPs are making
43:37.832 --> 43:41.146
it more complicated. You have to go through the rigor of setting up the wallet,
43:41.278 --> 43:44.862
setting up, getting all your hashes. You have to deal with
43:44.936 --> 43:48.618
the opaqueness to a certain extent. We're talking
43:48.644 --> 43:52.218
about how public and open the
43:52.244 --> 43:55.890
blockchain allows transactions to be. There are many
43:55.940 --> 43:59.326
new studies demonstrating how much of it is wash trading.
43:59.398 --> 44:02.698
There is far less of an interest than the people selling
44:02.734 --> 44:06.378
NFTs want artists to believe are there are many cases of
44:06.404 --> 44:10.218
artists going in trying to
44:10.244 --> 44:13.702
sell their art as NFPs. They find themselves overwhelmed
44:13.786 --> 44:17.554
by the entry costs of how you actually go and Mint
44:17.602 --> 44:21.150
your NFT. And then there's no actual
44:21.200 --> 44:24.846
market for it because the examples of things going at crazy
44:24.908 --> 44:28.306
prices. A lot of that is wash trading, where bad actors
44:28.378 --> 44:32.410
are selling it to themselves to fabricate seeming
44:32.470 --> 44:35.322
interest. On the other hand,
44:35.396 --> 44:39.406
there's already tons of ways to go celebrate and support the artists
44:39.478 --> 44:43.174
that you like. A lot of the artists who have public activity
44:43.222 --> 44:47.970
on the web, who have their open portfolios, they've got various
44:50.970 --> 44:54.610
web pages where you can throw with a credit card. It sounds like
44:54.660 --> 44:57.010
if you don't trust your credit card company, what are you going to do?
44:57.060 --> 45:00.502
But with credit card, with other already
45:00.576 --> 45:04.438
established digital payment systems, you can send them money.
45:04.584 --> 45:08.218
A lot of them have online merch stores. There are tons of ways to do
45:08.244 --> 45:11.962
that. And from a perspective on end, those have
45:11.976 --> 45:15.420
been far more healthy and successful for artists than
45:15.810 --> 45:19.318
trying to Mint NFTs and then sell them to
45:19.344 --> 45:22.906
a nonexistent audience. Okay, so it's kind
45:22.908 --> 45:26.086
of a difficult marketplace, you're saying? Yeah.
45:26.268 --> 45:29.446
Okay. So basically
45:29.508 --> 45:32.842
the strategy for these sorts of inventions, you're going to need to do
45:32.856 --> 45:34.870
a wider foreign filing.
45:36.750 --> 45:40.102
You want to do that because it actually has sales
45:40.176 --> 45:43.658
and in use occurrences as possible from any location. With a computing
45:43.694 --> 45:47.050
device, you're dealing with financial transactions which
45:47.100 --> 45:50.338
happen all over the world. And also one
45:50.364 --> 45:53.762
note, China is a huge player in inventions and companies for blockchain.
45:53.846 --> 45:56.170
So always file in China.
45:57.450 --> 46:01.802
And as far as what's out there right now, you've probably gotten thousands
46:01.886 --> 46:05.242
of blockchain or cryptocurrency sort of technology
46:05.376 --> 46:08.110
on file. There's not a whole lot allowed yet,
46:08.160 --> 46:11.542
maybe in the hundreds. So it's still an open market.
46:11.616 --> 46:15.238
So make sure you're mining those fields. If you have
46:15.264 --> 46:18.934
inventors who do things tangential to this and also
46:18.972 --> 46:22.574
litigation isn't super common yet, and as soon as somebody profits
46:22.622 --> 46:26.014
from it, these patents that will come. But right now
46:26.112 --> 46:29.290
it's kind of an open market. And then the other piece.
46:29.340 --> 46:33.022
Consider trade secrets before disclosing all your concepts in the patent application.
46:33.156 --> 46:36.698
This might be especially important if you do blockchain
46:36.734 --> 46:39.898
in a slightly different way if your cryptocurrency is new and
46:39.924 --> 46:42.550
different and functions differently than typical.
46:44.130 --> 46:47.278
When you're looking at the claims, this is going to look like method claims and
46:47.304 --> 46:50.578
system claims and computer readable medium claims, and they're all going
46:50.604 --> 46:53.582
to look very mirrored. You probably have a single method,
46:53.666 --> 46:57.394
a system that kind of copies that method, and a computer readable medium that
46:57.432 --> 47:00.060
also mirrors the method or system.
47:00.630 --> 47:04.478
And that is because I think you'll get a lot of restriction
47:04.514 --> 47:07.798
requirements if you do not do that in these fields. I think
47:07.824 --> 47:11.338
your claims would be different enough method wise that if you
47:11.364 --> 47:15.046
had two method claims that even were
47:15.108 --> 47:17.890
slightly different, I think you're going to get a restriction.
47:19.170 --> 47:22.382
Examples of potentially patentable core Technologies When you're
47:22.406 --> 47:26.170
interviewing inventors, you may see things like blockchain tech
47:26.220 --> 47:30.490
changes, distributed ledger changes, data structure differences.
47:31.050 --> 47:34.318
Remember, new data structures can be a way to
47:34.344 --> 47:37.706
get over a subject matter 101 rejection.
47:37.778 --> 47:42.158
So if you have a new data structure, describe it transaction
47:42.194 --> 47:45.082
protocols, processing and validation methods might be new.
47:45.216 --> 47:48.902
We've got digital wallet stuff and apps and software
47:48.926 --> 47:53.678
that might be new or work different than typical smart
47:53.714 --> 47:58.322
contract platforms, different ways of mining consensus methodologies
47:58.406 --> 48:01.690
services, applications of any of the bot
48:02.550 --> 48:05.674
It's software, and so it's wide open for
48:05.712 --> 48:06.670
combinations.
48:09.190 --> 48:12.762
Remember in the specification, get your subject matter eligibility
48:12.846 --> 48:16.358
stuff in there. It will happen. I don't see
48:16.384 --> 48:20.778
a way around this. You're adding business method, financial ideas,
48:20.934 --> 48:24.546
and software in general in like a package
48:24.618 --> 48:28.514
almost with these inventions. So I
48:28.552 --> 48:32.402
think you will see these rejections more often unless something changes in
48:32.416 --> 48:36.362
the landscape, but to avoid those. Building your descriptions for
48:36.376 --> 48:40.154
the advantages. Building your technical solutions to technical problems.
48:40.312 --> 48:44.260
Describe practical applications, describe improvements to technology,
48:44.590 --> 48:48.230
and add your specific results. Outcomes I don't always
48:48.280 --> 48:51.954
like to do this. Improvements to technology tends to denigrate prior
48:52.002 --> 48:54.474
art if you do them improperly.
48:54.642 --> 48:57.962
So be careful, but also get them in there for
48:57.976 --> 49:01.598
this type of technology because you will likely need to rely on
49:01.624 --> 49:05.450
them in office action responses and appeals.
49:06.550 --> 49:10.034
Example Advantages These inventions can maybe provide cost
49:10.072 --> 49:13.470
and error reduction, tamper resistance
49:13.590 --> 49:16.610
or security over conventional transactions,
49:16.990 --> 49:19.850
fraud deterrence over conventional transactions,
49:20.350 --> 49:24.410
and reduction in the errors of system failures over conventional transactions,
49:24.970 --> 49:27.902
and some of these might go the opposite way. So it just depends on what
49:27.916 --> 49:31.934
your invention would be. And then one
49:31.972 --> 49:34.970
last thing for the specification, adjust for open source.
49:35.650 --> 49:39.554
This software is typically open source. It is done so
49:39.592 --> 49:43.226
for a reason. It is in the public domain and
49:43.288 --> 49:46.420
you just want to be careful to cover in your application.
49:47.410 --> 49:51.794
Why is your innovation new or different? Or what problems that
49:51.832 --> 49:55.562
existed before did you solve and ensure you
49:55.576 --> 49:59.130
have included descriptions for aspects that are not part of the open source pieces?
49:59.190 --> 50:02.874
If you have several pieces that are not open source,
50:02.922 --> 50:06.062
make sure those are thoroughly described because you may need to
50:06.076 --> 50:09.482
rely on them. And the last thing that you
50:09.496 --> 50:13.134
can look at at your leisure, this was the patent I did in 2019
50:13.242 --> 50:16.838
patent application for Google. And it
50:16.864 --> 50:21.246
was basically about creating a self sovereign identity
50:21.318 --> 50:25.142
account and being able to host that account and
50:25.336 --> 50:30.014
let people control or not control that account without
50:30.172 --> 50:34.182
being a Google and Apple of Facebook. So this was a user
50:34.206 --> 50:37.818
owned account. They did their own thing. They used a distributed
50:37.854 --> 50:41.802
log technology here in the right hand corner. They used public keys and private keys
50:41.826 --> 50:44.918
for the crypto, and they had policies and permissions for their
50:44.944 --> 50:48.482
account. And basically they
50:48.496 --> 50:51.938
were able to set up a blockchain system for a
50:51.964 --> 50:55.718
user to own an account. This application in
50:55.744 --> 50:59.738
particular was about, can I provide access control? Can I
50:59.764 --> 51:02.966
provide device control and all using this account?
51:03.088 --> 51:06.566
Right. So maybe I have a building with a super, and the super
51:06.628 --> 51:09.760
owns three of the four
51:10.390 --> 51:13.818
apartments, and he wants to provide utilities and door
51:13.854 --> 51:18.090
locks and maybe rent payment possibilities.
51:18.150 --> 51:21.858
He can all do that through an account like this without being monitored
51:21.894 --> 51:26.258
by a third party and without having to rely on a third party too.
51:26.404 --> 51:29.982
This also means which can happen with a third party,
51:30.006 --> 51:33.458
but it means it can occur by
51:33.484 --> 51:37.538
the actual person who owns the account being able to provide access
51:37.624 --> 51:41.046
or provide things through the account to other users.
51:41.238 --> 51:45.270
So it's an interesting idea to have maybe an entire apartment
51:45.330 --> 51:49.658
building on the same network and being able to share
51:49.804 --> 51:53.140
and maybe share costs share.
51:54.190 --> 51:57.950
If I locked myself out, maybe my neighbor can unlock
51:58.270 --> 52:01.398
because I gave him permission earlier to unlock my door.
52:01.434 --> 52:05.260
Right, right. Things like that.
52:06.190 --> 52:10.646
Can I point out the irony of that application being
52:10.708 --> 52:14.150
owned by Google? Yes, you can.
52:14.260 --> 52:18.078
Believe me. So did the inventor. The inventor is just a brilliant
52:18.114 --> 52:21.700
UK man who does a lot of contracting for Google and
52:25.210 --> 52:28.610
just lovely the way he went through this.
52:28.780 --> 52:32.238
Every time he had a description, he would say, and unlike
52:32.274 --> 52:36.374
Google, he would describe his invention. And so it was
52:36.412 --> 52:39.950
great. It was great to see that even their engineering people thinking,
52:40.120 --> 52:43.910
yeah, back to the trusted environment.
52:45.670 --> 52:48.750
Yeah, exactly. Okay. Key takeaways
52:48.810 --> 52:52.334
are really just there's lots of innovations coming with blockchain web three
52:52.372 --> 52:56.130
might be an interesting growth step. And when drafting blockchains
52:56.250 --> 53:00.726
building help for yourself with that subject matter eligibility rejection
53:00.918 --> 53:04.058
content I mean, if it continues like it is,
53:04.084 --> 53:06.340
it will still be painful in this field.
53:08.930 --> 53:12.174
No end in sight. There no end in sight. All right, that's it.
53:12.212 --> 53:15.858
Any questions or comments? No, that was
53:15.884 --> 53:19.062
awesome. Good rundown of the space.
53:19.136 --> 53:23.250
Now when all the talking heads talk about these things now,
53:23.360 --> 53:26.806
I appreciate the nuance of the receipt
53:26.938 --> 53:30.980
versus the NFP the whole thing.
53:31.730 --> 53:34.940
I guess I understood the digital room thing, but I kind of thought,
53:36.290 --> 53:39.270
yeah, it was like way more accessible,
53:39.830 --> 53:44.142
potentially more controllable. So that's interesting. I didn't appreciate that.
53:44.336 --> 53:47.960
I didn't either. Thank you, Dan. Yeah,
53:49.430 --> 53:52.940
I told him earlier that it's happening. He already gone.
53:53.450 --> 53:56.010
Well, I think we're still recording.
53:59.730 --> 54:03.370
No worries. Well, thank you. All right,
54:03.420 --> 54:07.774
that's all for today, folks. Thanks for listening. And remember to check us out@aurorapatins.com
54:07.812 --> 54:11.294
for more great podcasts, blogs and videos covering all things patent
54:11.342 --> 54:14.326
strategy. And if you're an agent or attorney and would like to be part of
54:14.328 --> 54:18.178
the discussion or an inventor with a topic you'd like to hear discussed, email us
54:18.204 --> 54:21.998
at podcast@aurorapatins.com do remember that this podcast
54:22.034 --> 54:25.660
does not constitute legal advice and until next time, keep calm and patent on.