Patents as Non-Fungible Tokens? Attorneys See Promise—and Problems
IBM and global patent market IPwe announced that they were developing the ability for patents to be represented as non-fungible tokens, an application that could help companies better track their IP—or confuse an already murky process.
April 21, 2021 at 12:00 PM
4 minute read
If attorneys were hoping that case law would be given a chance to catch up before the use of blockchain spread any further, they may want to sit down. Yesterday, IBM and global patent market IPwe announced plans to create an infrastructure that would allow patents to be represented as non-fungible tokens (NFTs)—digital files on a blockchain ledger that show who owns a piece of digital content—by the end of 2021.
While some lawyers have recently zeroed in on NFT-related litigation given the scant amount of case law on the subject, others have been tracking the patent implications even longer. "The use of blockchain is something that people in the intellectual property space have been pushing for quite a few years now," said Ali Dhanani, a partner at Baker Botts.
He considers patents to be a very "natural use case" for NFTs, citing the ability for clients to easily summarize transaction dates and create verifiable accountability and assignment records without having to engage the costly services of an IP attorney.
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