Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey announced in a Sept. 10 tweet that his financial technology firm Square has launched the “Crypto Open Patent Alliance” (COPA).
In the tweet, Dorsey also announced that Square Crypto put all of its cryptocurrency patents into the shared patent library maintained by the COPA nonprofit. He explained that the aim of the initiative is “to help the crypto community defend against patent aggressors and trolls.”
According to Square Crypto, “there is growing concern that ‘patent lockup’ could stifle innovation and adoption from bitcoin to the most obscure cryptocurrency.” The company explained:
“The success of cryptocurrencies, as with any new technology, depends on people being able to build what they want, which is not possible when every new idea gets tied up by patent litigation.”
Square Crypto explained in a separate tweet that in order for Bitcoin and crypto to be free and open, the technology that it is based on must be available to everyone. COPA intends to help ensure the openness of those technologies by having its members pledge to never “assert their patents on foundational cryptocurrency technology, except defensively.”
Furthermore, the patents held in COPA’s shared patent library can be defensively used by any member entity. Square Crypto claims that this way even the smaller firms in the space will be able to protect themselves from patent aggressors. Of course, the success of the project depends on how many industry players join it:
“As more companies join and the shared patent library grows, the freer we’ll all be to pursue crypto’s future. As a good faith gesture, we’ll be making the first move and opening all of our crypto patents for future COPA members to use.”
Dorsey still loves Bitcoin
Apparently, Dorsey is still a big fan of Bitcoin and other decentralized cryptocurrencies even after they motivated hackers to compromise the systems of his most well-known and successful firm—Twitter.
As Modern Consensus reported in mid-July, the hack took control of verified Twitter profiles including ones maintained by Ripple, Apple, Uber, Tesla’s Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Kanye West, Barack Obama and Joe Biden to publicize a Bitcoin giveaway scam.
Following the large-scale hack, Bitcoin took part of the blame, with some outright suggesting that it should be banned. New York Times journalist Josh Barro tweeted:
“You know, we wouldn’t have to worry about this sort of thing if cryptocurrency was illegal. I’m not kidding. Crypto has no socially beneficial uses and quite a few socially harmful uses. Why is it allowed?”
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January 26, 2018
