Intellectual Property and the Blockchain Sector, a World of PotentialEconomic Growth and Conflict
Appavoo Umamaheswari, Sakthivel Lakshmana Prabu · IntechOpen eBooks · 2023
This chapter reviews current developments in the blockchain ecosystem whose outcome will impact the intellectual ownership of key aspects of the technology. The players include governments, legislators, and law makers attempting to make sense of an opaque, impenetrable, and baffling technological and social environment where myth and reality get mixed up. The interested parties are: on the one hand, the IP owners of blockchain-related technological developments. On the other hand, late comers hoping to deny these rights to use the said developments in their own businesses for free and in an unlimited manner. At stake: billions of US dollars and the real capacity for a new industrial revolution. But also, conceptions of the highest importance for human societies such as veracity, recognition and knowledge of the truth. In the background a world of spectators with an extremely unequal understanding of the technology, the implications of the intellectual property protections and what is being elucidated in this case. Focusing on specific developments, the authors navigate these matters to shed light on the events, the background, and the economic and social implications of the legal decisions around IP ownership that are being determined by the courts of law about the said developments.