The last year of 2017 witnessed an unprecedented growth of the cryptocurrency market and along with the blockchain technology. Although the views of the global financial markets remain divided for digital currencies, a majority of them still supports the underlying blockchain technology.
In the latest report by Financial Times, it has been found that China is currently holding more than 50% out of the total 406 blockchain related patents that were filed in 2017, according to data collected by Thomson Reuters from the World Intellectual Property Organisation (Wipo) database. The data shows that China filed 225 patents last year and 59 the year before, while the US filed 91 and Australia 13 in 2017.
However, in other data showing cryptocurrency related patents, China’s share is relatively knowing the fact that the country pulled out completely from the crypto markets by putting a blanket ban on all the exchange operators.
The blockchain technology, on the other hand, has potential applications on a wide range of industries like finance, logistics, automobile, banking, etc. A lot of tech companies are rushing to become early adopters of blockchain while filing important patents under their name.
In the last five years, the top filers have been European and US companies, including IBM (54), Netherland’s Gemalto (35), Intel (34), Thomson Licensing (31) and Amazon Technologies (27).
Alex Batteson, editor at Thomson Reuters’ Practical Law said: “Companies are moving fast in order to protect their ideas in new areas of technological development — long before the technology actually goes to market.”
In the list of top nine companies filing blockchain patents between 2012 and 2017, six of them were from Beijing Technology Development. During the same period, U.S-based payments giant MasterCard turned out to be the most active filer with 25 patent filings which was succeeded by the 18 filings of Lichtenstein’s nChain Holdings, which describes itself as the “global leader in research and development of blockchain technologies”.
However, even though not all patents will convert into actual products of the future, the filing of patents holds a significant relevance from the fact that it gives an overall outlook of the number of companies working in that particular space.
Mr. Batteson said: “Patents are also important for companies to attract all-important investment. Investors need to know that a business owns and can capitalise on the intellectual property and will not face interference from other parties claiming ownership.”
