Jerry Brito talks to Kirupa Pushparaj, Head of Intellectual Property and Legal Operations at Square, about the Crypto Open Patents Alliance, which aims to create open access to patents covering foundational cryptocurrency technologies and ward off trolls.
Because the cryptocurrency space is still relatively nascent, there haven’t been that many patents filed. And many of the patents that have been granted are held by innovative firms that understand that crypto is meant to be open source and open network, permissionless and unowned. If all crypto firms banded together now, at this early stage, they could not only protect each other from offensive use of patents today, they could prevent those patents from ever falling in the hands of trolls in the future. That’s what the Crypto Open Patents Alliance is trying to do.