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Compact:
- The “Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance” (COPA) wants to make the market more open.
- Patents are therefore too often misused to harm competitors.
- The members guarantee the mutual use of patents.
Most of the work for and on Bitcoin is open source and freely accessible to everyone. But according to Jackey Dorsey, there is still a need to create a protected space that enables companies to share their own patents relating to Bitcoin with other companies. Dorsey’s own company, Square Crypto, has a keen interest in this.
Accordingly, there are too many market participants who would abuse patent law to prevent competition from making progress in certain areas. The solution is relatively simple. The COPA is intended to enable all companies and individuals to become members of the umbrella organization, which is oriented as a non-profit, without distinction.
Members make their patents available to COPA, in return they are allowed to access the organization’s library and freely use patented technologies of the other members. The only exceptions are those patent applications that are intended to maintain existing patents.
Together we are strong
The alliance can only be successful if it can find enough members who also continuously develop and patent their own technologies. Square Crypto wants its own patents COPA make available, something else would hardly have been expected.
Together they want to protect the members, which ultimately means that the patents may only be used for legal defense. Members may only use the patents for offensive lawsuits, among other things, if another company acts as the aggressor and threatens the “patent peace” with lawsuits.
This gives companies that want to aggressively use property rights to taste something of their own medicine or they can join.
Bitcoin is not the only keyword
Dorsey is considered an advocate of Bitcoin. One appeared only yesterday Interview with Reutersin which Dorsey emphasized the role of Bitcoin as the currency of the Internet. He himself started several initiatives to further develop and spread Bitcoin. In the course of this, the COPA is just another component.
But it is noticeable that the COPA not only wants to protect Bitcoin, but also crypto currencies in general. It is foreseeable that patented technologies of other crypto currencies will also find their place in the COPA library.
