Patents in the world of Bitcoin

[rogerver]

This is a fantastic point made by Jeff Garzic:

https://twitter.com/jgarzik/status/646539020093267968

Do you have any ideas on what we can do to ensure that most Bitcoin companies behave like Tesla in this regard?

[keonne]

I am fundamentally opposed to patents and IP. I rather the bitcoin community especially the big boys with big money backing them (Blockchain, Bitpay, etc) rally together in opposition to this overreach by Coinbase.

Spend the time, money, and resources to lobby the USPTO that Coinbase nor anyone else cannot possibly patent these types of things (especially a Hot Wallet...come on) and set a precedence of patent rejections in regards to simple bitcoin tech.

Other than that, Twitter has a pretty decent model for patents which can be seen here
https://github.com/twitter/innovators-patent-agreement but really, in this age, do we really need to put our trust in corporations funded by legacy financial players and banks to 'do no evil' with these patents?

[LiteCoinGuy]

This is a fantastic point made by Jeff Garzic:

https://twitter.com/jgarzik/status/646539020093267968

Do you have any ideas on what we can do to ensure that most Bitcoin companies behave like Tesla in this regard?

bitcoin is still a small thing with a small community (reddit, bitcointalk and bitcoin.com ). reputation counts alot in the bitcoin world.
when people see that coinbase is suing smaller startups for using some of their stuff in the future, that would hurt the image of coinbase alot. that would be one way.

[btc]

This is a fantastic point made by Jeff Garzic:

https://twitter.com/jgarzik/status/646539020093267968

Do you have any ideas on what we can do to ensure that most Bitcoin companies behave like Tesla in this regard?

bitcoin is still a small thing with a small community (reddit, bitcointalk and bitcoin.com ). reputation counts alot in the bitcoin world.
when people see that coinbase is suing smaller startups for using some of their stuff in the future, that would hurt the image of coinbase alot. that would be one way.

stupid decision coinbase. they will lose lots of respect and business. but it probably won't matter.

good luck patenting software. isn't that next to impossible these days? also these hardware patents are common knowledge, they shouldn't succeed with any of these patent filings.

[rogerver]

According to Silicon Angle they are trying to patent the following:

• Hot wallet for holding Bitcoin
• User Private Key Control
• Bitcoin Private Key Splitting for Cold Storage
• Instant Exchange
• Personal Vault
• Send Bitcoin to Email Address
• Bitcoin Exchange
• Tip Button
• Off-Blockchain Transactions in combination with On-Blockchain transactions

Some of those seem like the very essence of Bitcoin.

[LiteCoinGuy]

Shitstorm:

https://de.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comment ... inly_open/

but maybe they will patent it but allow anyone to use it. hopefully. like one user wrote:

"This is standard business, by a bitcoin-friendly company. They've made the decision to invest resources in filing patents - that's their prerogative. And, in the current business environment where patents exist, and someone else filing and acquiring these patents might cripple their business, it may be a sound decision.

Even Tesla filed for patents, and held them privately, before opening them up.

Someone is going to file these patent applications. So, who if not Coinbase, would you prefer be the first to file these applications? Because if it's not a bitcoin-friendly company, it might be patent troll or a big bank or someone who is not friendly to Bitcoin."

[LiteCoinGuy]

How We Think About Patents At Coinbase

There have been a few articles in the past week commenting on Coinbase filing for patents. I thought it might be helpful to give some context about how we think about patents.

https://medium.com/@barmstrong/how-we-t ... d82b68e7db

[btc]

even if they succeed the community will challenge their patents.

they better release as open source, but then why patent in the first place??

bunch of thomas edisons over at coinbase.