Community IP: the case for an ICO Patent fund

Too Long; Didn't Read

In 2014 I applied for a patent on the particular type of hardware wallet i was developing at the time. I thought it was a good idea, once before someone else had patented something I had publicly disclosed and thought it a necessary to protect myself going forward. Long story short- I abandoned the patent process after vehement protest from some members in the then Bitcoin community. (Interestingly, I paid my lawyer in Bitcoin- perhaps one of the first transactions of it’s kind: <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=381420.0;prev_next=prev" target="_blank"><em>BitcoinTalk</em></a><em>). </em>At the time I had been convinced the precedent was a bad one to follow, but I’ve never stopped thinking about how the ‘real’ world intersects with blockchain- and how <a href="https://hackernoon.com/tagged/blockchain" target="_blank">blockchain</a> is increasingly become the ‘real’ world.