The Crypto Open Patent Alliance is an alliance started last September by finance company Square.
COPA’s goal is to warden off patent overreach in the crypto space.
Coinbase is now supporting this mission.
COPA Board Member and Senior Counsel at Coinbase Brittany Cuthbert said the following today: (source: https://open-patent.org/).
“As the crypto economy continues to grow, we believe it is important to help empower all projects building towards an open financial system. We look forward to working alongside the members of COPA to create a foundational patent shield for our industry.””
COPA is trying to make and keep blockchain technology freely to use for everyone and tackle patent lockup. They are creating a shared patent library that should serve as a shield against patent afressors.
The more members they get, the stronger the shield.
I think this is a good initiative and it's good that large crypto companies like Coinbase are joining. Although patents are important for a return on investment for research of new technologies, they are often abused to claim monopoly and thus slow down the development of the technology.
Bitcoin ATM patent
An example of how patents can be abused is the claim from the firm Bots Inc. They claim between $14 million and $ 18 million dollar after acquiring a patent for Bitcoin ATM technology.
Bots acquired the following patent and claims the royalties for every Bitcoin ATM.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US9135787B1/en
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