Intellectual Property andPatent Assets on Casper
CasperLabs and patent technology innovator IPwe partner to improve the patentregistration process and create a new approach to patent ownership verification.

ScopeCasperLabs and IPwe have partnered to build a chain of custody (CoC) solution for public patent records.
The “CoC Solution” will use the Casper public blockchain to store, secure, and trace patent data. The
result is a paradigm shift in the application and role of patents in finance, technology, and enterprise.
Intellectual Property (IP) is the largest and often most critical asset on corporate balance sheets. CTOs
and CFOs today are taking a greater interest in how IP is tracked, managed and deployed. A first step inthe evolution of an improved understanding and management of this critical asset is a reliable CoCsolution.

CasperLabs is a blockchain development studiobuilding the Casper network (“Casper”). Casper isthe first provably live, scalable, and permissionless
Proof of Stake blockchain built off thecorrect-by-construction consensus model. Casper
is a future proof blockchain, designed to remain
performant, scalable, secure, decentralized, andadaptable as the Web3 ecosystem evolves todeveloper, business, and consumer needs.
Contact Casper at hello@casperlabs.io

IPwe has built the world’s first global patentmarket, connecting the world’s patent ecosystemon a single platform. The IPwe Platform enables
traditional patent transactions (licenses, sales, andacquisitions) and empowers new classes oftransactions like reporting, financing, andinsurance. IPwe leverages artificial intelligence,
data mining, predictive analytics, and now
blockchain technology to create entirely new waysof interacting and transacting with patents, andimproving understanding of this asset class.

Opportunity
Historically, CFOs and CTOs have had limited involvement in the business and financial management ofintellectual property, placing the asset as obscure entities that are difficult to track. As a result, critical
data including ownership records were not kept up to date, with error rates of IP data exceeding 30%. At atime when the benefits of cooperation, transparency and technological adoption are well understood as atrue competitive advantage by many C-suite executives, management of the IP asset class has not keptup.
The technology now exists to change how IP is managed. Casper and IPwe will deploy a CoC solution,
enabling government entities and some of the largest enterprises in the world to better manage and utilize
their IP. As with any asset class, the primary objectives will be met through increased transparency andunderstanding, and fulfilled through offering solutions that improve financial returns and lower costs.
As obvious as it might seem to many executives, it is difficult to capture the benefits of an asset without ahigh level of confidence in critical data surrounding the asset. Intellectual property has underperformed
because of this.

1

Solution
The CoC Solution will be developed in two phases.
Phase 1 一 which is in production 一 will demonstrate the ability of Casper to provide secure,cryptographic access to critical data about patents. Phase 1 will establish the interoperability of theCasper blockchain with Hyperledger. IPwe currently uses Hyperledger to support data availability within
its patent registry. Phase 1 of CoC will enable the primary data to remain on Hyperledger with selective,
high-value information migrated and maintained on the Casper public blockchain. Casper’s solution
enables that patent data to be encrypted (all data is encrypted by default, but authors can choose toexclude certain fields from encryption so that it is open for public view), with decryption available only
to the parties holding the encryption keys. In the case of patents, those parties are likely to be thepatent holders themselves, any entities licensed to use the patent, and selective regulatory agencies ifnecessary.

VerifyIPwe Admin

IPwe Platform
UIinvokechaincode

TX Read-Write-Set

HyperledgerPledge

IPwe User
Wharehouse
Notifier

Data Wharehouserevealdecryptedvalue

share secret key

Secret Key Store

Pick sharedsecret key

Compareand Verify
Store encrypted value and salted hashPublic
DataReplicator

Hash andEncrypt Confidentials

Value
Hash

browse puclic patent registryobtain key and hash

Court

Public SmartContract

Blockchain

Phase 2 will implement a more robust integration with IPwe’s infrastructure to create a Global Patent
Registry (GPR) with the Casper blockchain to support a consortium of Patent Owners, National PatentOffices, and Verifiers such as IPwe. GPR will bring the current process of granting, publishing, owning,transferring, and pledging patents onto the Casper blockchain, using smart contracts to manage theseprocesses. GPR will enable strong provenance capabilities, allowing for patents to be clearly traced asthey are created, maintained, licensed, and transferred. The result will be a more efficient, complete,equitable, globally compliant, and revenue-generating patent ecosystem that supports patent owners,
licensers, granting authorities, and verifiers.
2

Blockchain for Intellectual Property
Intellectual property is a vast umbrella of complex, intangible assets. IP is crucial to protect and uphold,but also difficult to do so by virtue of it being intangible. Verification of the most basic information such as
origin, existence, ownership, and chain of title are neither reliable nor readily available.
A solution to increase transparency and ease of establishing and evaluating these most fundamental facts
about IP – including Title, Provenance, and Transactional Efficiency - is needed to increase value
capture and utilization of the IP asset class.
Title: Owners of IP and their transaction partners need to remain confident that title isproperly recorded and known. Core to this goal is the assurance that access to IP can begranted, reviewed, and revoked by its primary owner or guardian at any time. More difficult
is the reality that only portions of one’s IP may be best suited for public exposure, with themost sensitive elements needing to be restricted. The complexity in permissioning is simply notsupported by existing technology. Blockchain technology can ensure that IP records are neither
manipulated nor deleted, while providing the flexibility for certain permitted parties to have selective
access of on-chain data.
Provenance: Intellectual property can change hands frequently and for many different
reasons. IP can be voluntarily transferred to other individuals or entities through anagreement, temporarily or indefinitely licensed to outside parties, forcibly transferred toanother party due to legal action, or dissolved as a piece of defined IP due to legal review.
Encumbrances are created as a result of lending transactions and other corporate transactions. At its
worst, these transfers and actions create a complex, disparate, and unorganized record of provenancethat is difficult to store, frustrating to maintain, and operationally expensive to review, verify, and update.
Blockchain technology’s public and transparent nature ensures everyone can see the record of data
entries. Decentralization ensures there is no central source of manipulation, so provenance on a
blockchain network can be verified and assured by any individual.
Transactional Efficiency: Intellectual property can be difficult to monetize, particularly
because of the difficulty of identifying the chain of ownership and provenance notedabove, but also because of the costs these inefficiencies create. For patents in particular,patent owners lose out on an estimated estimated $1 trillion of potential revenue in the US
alone each year in missed partnerships. A transparent and reliable means to verify these attributes are
the first required step in improving management and returns on this critical asset.

3Casper for Intellectual Property
The Casper blockchain is uniquely tailored to solving the types of problems currently faced by theintellectual property ecosystem, especially with regards to patent management.
Security: Casper enables network users to selectively grant and revoke permission to someor all data stored on the blockchain. IP owners can ensure that only specific parties haveaccess to certain data and can revoke some or all of that access in more efficient ways thancurrently available. Access may be revoked manually due to an agreement or breach ofcontract or may be programmed via a smart contract to terminate automatically with theterms of a subscription.
Provenance: Casper establishes a clear chain of records through cryptographic hashes thatare stored on the network. For private networks, secure and private records can be compiledand “sent” to the public blockchain, ensuring the data can be irrefutably verified but noinformation is revealed.
Transactional Efficiency: With robust support of data provenance and the ability to encode
payments through smart contracts, Casper enables these systems to confidently ensure
payments are distributed fairly to patent and IP beneficiaries while reducing the associatedcost and difficulty.

Contact Casper at hello@casperlabs.io4