# Emerging Perspectives of Blockchains in Food Supply Chain Traceability Based on Patent Analysis
## 4 Discussion  
### Patenting Trends and Patenting Landscape  
The first fact confirmed in the present investigation is that patenting activities in the field of application of BCs in FSCs were initiated quite recently, and the number of granted patents is very low. The number of applications started to increase during the last four years, while the value of the patents, in terms of forward citations, is quite low for the majority of patent applications. An exponential increasing trend in BC-related patenting in general started in 2017 and reached 14072 patents in 2021, from 231 in 2016 [49]. Patent analysis in other areas shows similar trends, but with differences, in terms of patents targeting different fields of application. For example, BCs on 5G patent portfolios consisted of over 1000 public and over 120 approved patents in the periods 2014 to 2020 [50], while, for BC and energy, a study from 2020 revealed 24 approved and 295 public patents [51]. Additionally, the low number of patents with high value in terms of family size points out the absence in global spread of the developed solutions. These observations are aligned with findings from the academic literature, stating that, despite the enormous potential for large-scale improvements in FSCs through the utilization of BCs [6], its adoption in FSCs is still in the introductory phase [52], and successful projects and sector-specific studies of BCs in FSCs are still scarce [53]. The situation of BC technology application in other supply chains might be a good indicator of probable development in FSCs. Patent life cycle analysis results indicate that patents related to BCs based on 5G peaked in 2018, followed by a bottleneck period beginning in 2019 [50]. Patenting in the cluster of smart contract applications, privacy preserving and intellectual property, certificate issuance and verification, tokenization, virtual reality gaming, and interoperability is also in a stage of maturity [49]. Such findings indicate that similar fast development might also be expected in the case of BC application in FSCs. Figure 8: Distribution of patents within topics by country of origin. However, governance and broader partnership issues required for successful, sustainable applications have still not been solved [46], and BC technology, although demonstrated as a good solution in some FSCs, is not yet ready for mass acceptance. This situation is the consequence of different barriers associated with the implementation of BC technology in FSCs, which are still present in practice. These barriers include technological, organizational human resources-related, and economic barriers [26]. The barriers and challenges are diverse and related to human capital, such as gaps in understanding [17], lack of skills and training [54], and an insufficient number of trained members in the workforce [27]. Barriers are related also to technical issues in application [55], including scalability [53; 54], and development and adoption of the most appropriate BC structures for each FSC [13]. Economic barriers include a lack of opportunities for further research [17], availability of funds and clarity on economic gains [27], and incentivization [53], as well as policy barriers, such as lack of regulations [54]. Worth mentioning also are those barriers related to the interest of stakeholders in preserving established hierarchies [6] and their unpreparedness to accept increased obligations related to fraud prevention, as well as waste, losses, and environmental impact reduction [25]. Another interesting observation is related to the countries that have been depicted as leaders in patent activities in the field of BC application in FSCs. Namely, the present analysis highlighted India and China as the countries with the highest number of patents dealing with the above-mentioned issue. The identified situation regarding geographical distribution of patents dealing with BC in FSCs is somewhat different from that of the general distribution of patents related to BCs.