Is it possible to patent Bitcoin?

Ira Schaefer and Ted Mlynár deal with issues of intellectual property in the new York firm of Hogan Lovells. They advise those wishing to patent the projects associated with cryptocurrencies and Blockchain technologies.

Here they argue about whether it is applicable to Bitcoin.

The bitcoin system was born in 2008 year with the release of a work titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" authored by Satoshi Nakamoto. In the following year was created the first block of the transaction that laid the Foundation for a network that still operates.

Given that no one person (or group of people) didn't approve the sponsorship document or described in this operating method of transaction, it is not surprising that there was not a single patent original work.

However, this does not prevent us to imagine for a moment how he might look, being decorated in the USA.

Despite the fact that a patent claim must pass the examination of US Patent and Trademark Office, we have taken the liberty to develop your expected requirement in plain language. For the purposes of discussion it will be useful to focus on the key features.

Note that in the work of Nakamoto does not use the term "Blockchain". Instead, it presents the "chain of blocks", so we use the same terminology.

Method for electronic transaction of the currency "from equal to equal" includes the following stages:

creating a hashed value for the previous transfer;

the Association of the hash value, transaction data and public key of the recipient;

digital signature combination for the formation of electronic currencies;

the announcement of unit feasts with a time stamp;

feasts "collect" coin for the formation of transaction block;

 every peer is from the group working on "proof of work" for your unit;

consensus is emerging, heralding its validity;

transactions are added to the existing block chain.

So here is a simple Bitcoin. It's just a series of actions, carried out by means of the computer connected to the Internet.

If the application filed in 2007, by 2011 the patent would be willing, after passing through a specific window for business methods".

About the validity of the patent

Certainly, the idea of recording the exchange of currency in the Ledger was a fundamental economic practice for over thousands of years.

Nakamoto in the article admits that the hashing, digital signatures, timestamps, and solve the "problem of the work performed in 2008, was known for Affairs.

However, it does not form a precedent in (a) particular combinations of the described processes and (b) the specific use of the hashed block chain transactions as a Ledger. Thus, the proposed method would improve the functionality of your computer, and it easily could be patented.

Even now, "Satoshi Nakamoto" could approve a patent for Bitcoin, according to recent court decisions.

The reality of such a scenario gives some food for thought and a reason for caution. Taking all this into account, let's not be surprised if one day the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto revealed... along with millions of bitcoins that will be in his hands due to the patent.