Blockchain Patent Landscape At a Glance
We are starting to see traditional giants gradually tapping into blockchain innovation, which is often considered as valuable intangible assets for them nowadays. Patents are essential to protect firm’s properties and technological know-how on blockchain. This analysis will have 2 parts, first part providing a holistic view on state of blockchain patents and second part reflecting the institutional adoption of blockchain patents.
Why Blockchain Patents are Important?
The number of blockchain patents is a useful metric to measure firm’s innovation activity in terms of scope of inventions, intensity of activity and collaboration between innovators. Blockchain patents enable firms with exclusive commercial rights in exchange for full public disclosure of the invention. The amount of blockchain patents are also positively correlated to the amount of intangible assets of the firm.
Blockchain Patents At a Glance
The filing of blockchain patents has been exploding since 2013, with an annual growth between 140-230%. According to IP Australia, China ranked 1st (1581) as the destination of blockchain patents, followed by the United States of 951 and South Korea of 220 (See Exhibit 1).
Exhibit 1: Number of Blockchain Patents By Destination
Source: IP Australia, Blockchain.News Data
Blockchain patents can be categorized into application and data processing. For applications, it can be further divided as payment and transaction systems, financial services, business administration and shopping and e-commerce. In particular, payment and transaction systems accounted for 61% of blockchain patents in applications (See Exhibit 2).
Exhibit 2: Proportion of Blockchain Patents in applications (Total: 1873)
Source: IP Australia, Blockchain.News Data
For blockchain patents in data processing, encryption and security accounts for 41% of total, followed by network and data transmission (36%) and data manipulation, management and interrogation (23%) (See Exhibit 3).
Exhibit 3: Proportion of Blockchain Patents in Data Processing (Total: 1148)
Source: IP Australia, Blockchain.News Data
Breakdown of Blockchain Patents in the USPTO
Exhibit 4: Keywords Appearance in the USPTO
| Keywords | In Title | Abstract | Full Text | Earliest Field Date |
| blockchain | 70 | 103 | 401 | 5 Nov 2013 |
| Block chain | 17 | 103 | 1565 | 20 Dec 1974 |
| bitcoin | 6 | 7 | 634 | 16 Aug 2011 |
| ethereum | 0 | 1 | 71 | 18 May 2017 |
| cryptocurrency | 7 | 17 | 173 | 17 Mar 2014 |
| smart contract | 0 | 13 | 0 | 24 Jul 2015 |
| crypto currency | 1 | 0 | 0 | 29 Mar 2012 |
Source: The USPTO, Blockchain.News Data
We delve deeper in the number of appearances of key blockchain and crypto terms under the database of the United States Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO) (See Exhibit 4). Unsurprisingly, we noticed that blockchain and Bitcoin are the most common keywords for blockchain patents. By looking at the earliest field date, we also noticed that it is consistent to the history of Bitcoin and blockchain development. For example, Bitcoin and blockchain have the earliest field date in patents among all keywords. Meanwhile, we believe there will be patents titled with “Smart Contract” and “Ethereum” in the near future.
Part 2 of blockchain patent analysis is coming up, stay tuned!
Image Credit: Incrypts.com