Analysis of DEFI Product: Patent Decentralized Finance (PTNT DeFi)

Analysis of DEFI Product: Patent Decentralized Finance (PTNT DeFi)
Name
Institutional Affiliation
Patent Decentralized Finance (PTNT DeFi)
Motivation and Tech Stack (Elevator pitch)
Patent Decentralized Finance (PTNT DeFi) aims to take patent systems to a game-changing and an entirely new level by introducing decentralized patent systems to address practical and bureaucratic barriers such as the costly bottle-necks in existing patent systems through the distributed ledger technologies (DLTs). Unlike the existing systems in patent offices, which are inefficient, slow, costly, and a potential harm to technological advancement, DLTs will provide practical solutions of decentralizing the systems and solve impeding issues at their grassroots. PTNT DeFi is a DLTS that enables these major challenges. The protocol that runs on Ethererum network, which will change the way stakeholders interact with the patent records system in a transparent, flexible, and scalable manner. Ethererum is the second blockchain generation that was introduced in 2014 and allows developers to run smart contracts on DLT systems (Bamakan et al., 2022). Using this tech stack, we will develop data records keeping for patents in a similar way developers have employed it in decentralized exchanges, crowd funding, and DeFi. Several months of research have informed us that the DLT-based system is not a magic bullet, and we have addressed potential legal, political, and organizational challenges that have deterred similar developments in the past to make PTNT DeFi a successful project (de Rassenfosse & Higham, 2021). So, what is the cost incurred in filing for a new patent in the existing system, and do the owners benefit from their applications as desired?
1 Background Information About the Product
1 Economic/business problem
The rationale of PTNT DeFi is to reconfigure the existing patent record system and solve cost-related problems through the decentralization of all patent-related systems with unparalleled flexibility, transparency, and efficiency. Granting inventors the right to block others from their discoveries would offer them an economic incentive and increase their efforts in inventive processes, thus creating a better world (de Rassenfosse & Higham, 2021). Furthermore, PTNT DeFi will ensure that the disclosure of technical information in inventions and patents facilitate diffusion of knowledge, better research, and global economic growth. Nevertheless, the existing patent systems are far from achieving this objective due to their high cost, inefficiency, and bureaucracy (de Rassenfosse & Higham, 2021). Like any business, current patent systems face a plethora of shortcomings, including legal and political challenges that affect their profitability in the long-run. Patent offices are often resource-constrained and operate within poor established industrial and legal environments. These challenges affect inventors as financial constraints impact on the decisions about patent eligibility and novelty, which are crucial issues in ensuring continued research and development (R&D).
PTNT DeFi protocol will treat patents as assets, which is in essence parts of their bargain with regulatory systems and governments. In this case, inventors will disclose the details of their inventions and the government or patent office will grant the inventors temporary rights to exclude its application by others. Following this step, the inventor will then wish to treat the patent as any other asset. Traditionally, assets can be licensed for use to others, sold outright, collateralized or securitized, or placed into the public domain. However, most jurisdictions do not offer any legal obligation for changes in patent ownership, which has significantly impacted the efficiencies in the innovation system (de Rassenfosse & Higham, 2021). For this reason, one use case of PTNT DeFi would be to allow inventors transfer ownership of their work through the blockchain just like other digital and cryptocurrency assets. This will massively benefit the inventors and encourage more innovative work.
2 Standard operation/workflow of your project
A valid patent is presented by an applicant/inventor, exposed to rigorous examination, and finally fed into the blockchain where it can be accessed in the public domain. Filing of an application would be the first step of the patenting process with PTNT DeFi, just like any traditional patent office. DLT-based patents are recorded in a DLT system, which is a minor extension to the existing procedure for filing patents in government offices (Hashimy et al., 2021). The only extension is to add the record to the ledger and provide a notice that a filing has been made in the patent office. Besides, any future transactions on the patent application are recorded and maintained in the ledger, thus providing immutability and transparency afforded by blockchain technology. Currently, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) carry out this process through the private Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) and the Patent Center, which is the Next Generation Patent application and retrieval system (de Rassenfosse & Higham, 2021). The European Patent Office (EPO) also does the same through the European Patent Register. Although these two offices can be trusted, PTNT DeFi allows for the transfer of technology between potentially untrusting individuals while maintaining the patent application secret through the use of hashes. In this case, PTNT can tell whether the application is in pre-grant status or has already been transferred to “awaiting examination” status without the need to go back to the patent office. This is enabled through the use of hashing in the blockchain.
The next process is to examine the patent application and exempt weak patents from the blockchain. According to de Rassenfosse and Higham (2021) recent years have witnessed concerns about the quality of patents granted and PTNT DeFi aims at resolving these challenges. Issues of patent application rejections could be sorted through “prior art bounties” an idea of paying third parties for their prior work that may result in rejections. Similarly, contracting out the process of examination will ease the process of grant approvals. This is one of the main privileges of any patent office, but with increasing issues of quality of granted patents, alternative procedures are required. According to Helman (2018), the centralized nature of the patent system such as the U.S. PTO results in inefficiencies such as low quality patents, production issues, and information inefficiencies. To improve this process, incorporation review processes and involving small-scale experimentation would be needed before a patent is issues and fed into the blockchain. With the current system, Ali (2021) finds that textualized invention offers substantive examination using technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain.
2 Detailed Product Information
3 Customers
This protocol is mainly designed to benefit inventors/discoverers that can create value out of their work. The decentralized patent system will provide confidentiality of inventors’ work, which can be turned into assets. Besides, another group of beneficiaries would be the public that can have the incentive to participate in the invention economy. There are adequate incentives to expect through active participation of the PTNT DeFi community since a quali...