Craig Wright has altogether filed more than 50 patent applications in Britain through Antigua-registered EITC Holdings Ltd for this year.
The name of Craig Wright has been on the front pages of bitcoin news this year. The Australian entrepreneur once made a sensational announcement that he is a real bitcoin creator. However, later the information turned out to be incorrect.
As security researcher Robert Graham said: “Craig Wright magically appears to have proven he knows Satoshi’s private-key, when in fact he’s copied the inputs/outputs and made us think we calculated them. It would’ve worked, too, but there’s too many damn experts in the blockchain who immediately pick up on the subtle details.”
This time Reuters informs that Craig Wright now focuses on the creation of a large patent portfolio around bitcoin and blockchain.
Wright has filed more than 50 patent applications in Britain through Antigua-registered EITC Holdings Ltd since February. The company is claimed to be a source close Wright. EITC Holdings Ltd confirms that it is examining patent applications. Besides, Britain’s Intellectual Property Office has unveiled 11 more patent applications filed by the company in the past week.
Wright remains silent about patent applications. “None of this has stopped,” says one person close to the company who preferred to stay anonymous.
According to the sources, two of the patents Wright filed for concern a mechanism for paying securely for online content and an operating system for running an “internet of things” on blockchain. Reuters saw a patent schedule, one of the documents proving Wright’s relation to the filings, which reveals plans to apply for about 400 patents in total.
Novelist and journalist Andrew O’Hagan, who has been rather close to Wright, states that the patents would then be sold “for upwards of a billion dollars”.
“It looks like he is trying to patent the fundamental building blocks of any blockchain, cryptocurrency, or distributed ledger system,” said Antony Lewis, a consultant on bitcoin issues, when shown the patent titles and some of the texts.
If even some of the patents are granted, this will be significant for multiple industries besides banking as well as for startups that are trying to exploit bitcoin technologies. The survey conducted by boutique investment bank Magister Advisors shows that the sum expected to be spent on projects connected with the blockchain will exceed $1 billion this year.
It is necessary to bear in mind that bitcoin and blockchain cannot be managed through traditional means even despite multiple patent filings. Many agree that it is impossible to patent the technology since there is no centralization involved in either protocol.
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