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Australian 'Bitcoin Founder' Quietly Bidding For Patent Empire (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Craig Wright, the Australian who claimed to be the inventor of bitcoin, is attempting to build a large patent portfolio around the digital currency and technology underpinning it, according to associates of his and documents reviewed by Reuters. Since February, Wright has filed more than 50 patent applications in Britain through Antigua-registered EITC Holdings Ltd, which a source close to the company confirmed was connected to Wright, government records show. Interviews with sources close to EITC Holdings Ltd, which has two of Wright's associates as directors, confirmed it was still working on filing patent applications and Britain's Intellectual Property Office has published another 11 patent applications filed by the company in the past week. The granting of even some of the patents would be significant for banking and other industries that are trying to exploit bitcoin technologies, as well as dozens of start-ups scurrying to build business models based around it. Patents that Wright has applied for range from a mechanism for paying securely for online content to an operating system for running an "internet of things" on blockchain. A patent schedule, one of a number of documents relating to the applications shown to Reuters by a person close to the EITC Holdings, outlines plans to apply for about 400 in total.
As most of this had been already publicly released how comes that they don't fall under prior art (and the fact that software patents are not enforceable in Europe)?
Trying to lure out the real Satoshi, are we?
... these will probably be granted and fiercely defended. People M-DEL Leeches who attempt to profit from the hard work of a community make my blood boil.
I am of course assuming he has no legitimate claim to them given he declined to give evidence that he is in fact Satoshi Nakamoto.
The real satoshi has a mathematically incontrovertible signature he can use to sign and publish messages to the world, so there is no need to lure that person out. The original also, intentionally, released and spread his paper and code, and distributed efforts throughout a community for both development and adoption, which would indicate any claims of infringement to copyright (the validly applicable area of law, unlike patents, which would cover inventions in the computing machine or some other hardware, but not mere instructions).
More interesting is what happens if Wright gets legally recognized: I say freeze his accounts and assets, and then demand that he move sufficient bitcoin to cover the back-dues in tax and penalties. If he can't, or the money comes from elsewhere (rather than Satoshi moving his chunk of the blockchain and converting into cash), then we know he is either a psychopathic, entrepeneurial conman, or the face of a government operation to try to engineer its way into owning and controlling bitcoin via legal grants and decree.
It sure looks like someone is making a lot of money from creating bitcoin, and it's shameful. Bitcoin was developed as a tool to allow criminals to easy pay for contraband or illegal services without being tracked by law enforcement. Legitimate businesses do not accept bitcoin as payment and banks do not process this rogue currency. It's sad and genuinely shameful to see someone profit so greatly through creating tools to support criminal activity.
He didn't claim to be the inventor of BitCon, he was CLAIMED TO BE the inventor of BitCon. Fuck BitCon and fuck that guy, but at least fucking try to be objective in the descriptions.
Drop it like it's hot! Drop it like it's hot! Will the real Satoshi please stand up? I repeat, will the real Satoshi please stand up?
Kthxbai
If you don't patent your invention then someone else eventually will. You can whine and bitch all night long about how unfair it is, it won't change anything. Life is unfair. The real satoshi could easily have patented it and given the patent to the community. He chose not to. Oh well, too bad.
Nathan, is that you?
In most countries you will not be able to patent something that's been used and sold in markets in one form or another for a significant time.
If you invented something and it has been published without a patent you have a timeframe to file a patent and claim it, otherwise your patent is invalid, but every country is different.
The 'real' satoshi may not want to be identified, hence no ability to patent the technology. Even if you do patent you invention, if it's a big market then predatory patent companies will attempt to patent or buy every patent they can that's similar. If they have a good enough case on paper they might just get millions in out of court settlements, ideally from each company with each company signing non-disclosure agreements. They will legally blackmail each company with their patents, leverage the cost of defending against the case as the value of the settlement, not the actual legitimacy of the patent claim.
So, to run a big corporation you must have a good legal team to fight against these guys, but the patents still wind up making the big corporations a lot more than they lose in patent lawsuits. It's the normal, medium and smaller business that can really get screwed, especially startups that get targeted early. They get little benefit from patent laws and they are easy targets for a well oiled patent trolling machine.
You can bitch and whine all you want about not patenting you invention, but that will not stop patent trolls like this guy. He will just buy all similar patents until he has a case that he thinks a judge will be forced to take seriously, from there he can attempt to bargain time and court costs for direct pay-offs or settlements. It's legal blackmail and it's easy to do with a little startup money and no annoying morals to hold you down, especially on a niche market that relies on technology like bitcoin. Digital markets are especially easy to patent troll since they still rapidly changing and confuse judges and well everyone really.
400 patents for one idea? What the fuck! I think Bitcoin could probably be fully explained in less than 1,600 words, if well thought out. That's a patent for every four words.
:T:R:A:N:S:
I'm gonna patent cupping a fart in my hand and shoving it in someone's face. When is this nonsense going to stop.
Craig Wright didn't have anything whatsoever to do with creating bitcoin, and it has been repeatedly demonstrated that he is a fraud and a (successful) scammer.
He defrauded the Australian government out of millions of dollars. He also put himself squarely in the crosshairs of some extremely bad people when he started running his whole "I am Satoshi" scam. The kind of people who have no problem doing terrible things to potentially get their hands on a fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars that a person might allegedly have, just on the off chance that he wasn't lying.
That's the thing about being a career criminal. You live by the sword and you die by the sword.
Published at London Review of Books, it's a very interesting read (not finished it myself yet).
I'm not personally involved in Bitcoin in any way what-so-ever, but I stayed up way, way too late last night reading the LRB article.
O'Hagan also has one about Julian Assange, who I also have not one bit of interest it, that I couldn't stop reading.