With bitcoin prices rocketing nearly 300% from trough to peak when COVID-19 lockdowns were announced in March 2020 and then relaxed in July 2020, I thought I would revisit a blockchain company we discussed earlier last year to see how it has progressed and been valued by the financial community: Overstock.
With great power comes great responsibility. 5G is the next generation of 3GPP technology. Along with having the potential to facilitate the next leap in connectivity, 5G technology supremacy also has the power to define the geopolitics of the next century. As the global battle for 5G dominance plays out, companies are driving hard to secure coveted Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) encompassing 5G technology. The victor will secure substantial revenue and money flow in the form of patent royalties.
Prime phishing day is upon us; Google hangs on to social media aspirations by a Shoelace; the prospects of Apple’s AR glasses get cloudy; and more …
For all the excitement and promise of blockchain-based technology, it’s vital to remember that the very “newness” of a technology can lead to issues of basic legal compatibility. Few if any technologies magically create their own regulatory framework whole cloth, after all. For this reason, technology providers wishing to use the blockchain—or related distributed ledger technology (DLT)—in their own offerings necessarily must pay careful attention to how their particular blockchain-based technology will interact with the established (and evolving) contracts, laws and customer expectations encountered in the marketplace. Here are three of the biggest issues that await providers:
Back in January, news of reversed transactions on the Ethereum Classic (ETC) blockchain (little brother to the main Ethereum blockchain) made headlines and raised concerns about blockchain security. The product of a “51% attack,” these transaction reversals allowed some ETC tokens to be spent twice, a cardinal sin in cryptocurrency called a “double spend,” and the exact problem blockchains were invented to solve.
The use of blockchain and cryptocurrency platforms continues to evolve and expand into new markets. We recently highlighted the new patent issued to tZERO covering blockchain-based methods and systems to trade “digital transactional items,” so it should be no surprise that another company—UK-based VAKT—has developed a blockchain platform for energy commodity trading.
With bitcoin prices rising from the dead over the last few weeks (up nearly 25% from a December 14 low), there’s a degree of renewed excitement regarding blockchain and cryptocurrency. But as general public interest rises and falls, the steady process of creating useful applications and systems for distributed ledger technology continues. The issuing of new patents is one observable part of this process, and as such, it’s worth noting that trading platform tZERO, a portfolio company of the e-commerce giant Overstock, was recently awarded a patent outlining how it may merge legacy trading systems with cryptocurrencies and digital asset technology.
With the World Series upon us, here in Los Angeles, all eyes are on the Dodgers, who are in the hunt for their first championship trophy since 1988, a year best remembered for its epic mustaches and Kirk Gibson’s cinematic, two-out, walk-off home run. What may have gotten lost in the excitement, though, is a unique Dodgers fan giveaway that might also be remembered years from now.
The journey by which the blockchain and its underlying distributed ledger technology (DLT) becomes an everyday aspect of doing business is one of a thousand small steps, many of them legislative and regulatory. In “California’s New Law on Corporate Blockchain Use,” Riaz A. Karamali examines California’s recently signed SB-838, which amends Cal. Corp. Code § 204 (General Corporation Law) and Cal. Corp. Code § 2603 (Social Purpose Corporation Act) to allow certain corporations to use blockchain technology for certain corporate records. (Legislation triggering the formation of a “blockchain working group” that will evaluate the risks and legal implications associated with the use of the technology by state government and California-based businesses was also signed into law.)
As we approach 2020, distributed ledger technologies (DLT) appear likely to have a far-reaching, comprehensive impact on our global economy. But core components of that economy—intellectual property rights in particular—sit in tension with DLT. Copyright owners learned this lesson with the advent of BitTorrent. Patent owners will face similar threats from DLT-based computing platforms executing programs referred to as “smart contracts.” To date, less than 500 U.S. patents have issued with the term “blockchain” in a claim, and none appear to have been litigated. As such, many nuances of DLT patent enforcement have not yet manifested. Nonetheless, even a cursory review of current case law reveals the road to a decentralized utopia is laden with patent-law potholes.
Internet & Social Media Law Blog