How do blockchain technology and government agencies coexist in the process of intellectual property protection?

Blockchain technology provides suppliers with an immutable decentralized form of network transaction registration. Although financial institutions will continue to dominate the development of blockchain in the future, more and more companies are beginning to engage in the research and development of digital content registration technology, including Monegraph, ConSensys, Stem, Mediachain, Ascribe, etc.

Content registration refers primarily to the registration of ownership of intellectual property, most notably copyright registration. Ideally, this registration would accurately record the original ownership of a work, and then also record all subsequent transactions involving that work. Because copyright interests are divisible, transactions involving works can quickly become complicated.

Blockchains provide powerful tools to maintain and track ownership and transaction networks. As a result, blockchain registries have significant advantages over government registries. As a result, decentralized blockchain registries may one day replace centralized registries, such as the U.S. Copyright Office.

First, let’s take a quick look at the U.S. copyright registration process.

U.S. Copyright Office

Many years ago, works had to be registered with the Copyright Office to be protected under US law, but things are different now. Registration of works is no longer mandatory because copyright protection begins the moment a work is created.

As the Copyright Office's "Copyright Basics" notice states:

"Generally speaking, a copyright registration is a legal form that is a public record of a particular copyright."

Nearly 475,000 works are registered with the Copyright Office each year, and the Copyright Office charges a fee of $35 to $55 per work. Of course, this number of works only represents a small fraction of the copyrightable works created in the United States each year, especially considering the huge amount of social media works such as amateur photos, blogs, etc.

Before a work is registered, the Copyright Office will review it to ensure that it meets the registration requirements, but generally they will not conduct an in-depth substantive review.

Although registration of works is not mandatory, it does provide important legal advantages:

First of all, if you want to sue someone for infringement, you must have registered your trademark.

If you register in a timely manner, U.S. courts will presume that your copyright interest is valid, and the contents of the registration certificate will be considered to be facts unless another party rebuts the court's presumption.

By registering, you are announcing to the world that you own the copyright to your work, making it difficult for infringers to argue that what they are doing is innocent.

In addition to recording ownership of a work, you can also record a transfer of copyright with the Copyright Office. Registrations like work permits and other copyright transfers are not mandatory, but, like the initial registration, they give the author a slight advantage in legal matters.

Although it takes several months to issue the official registration certificate, the legal effect of the registration takes effect from the date you formally submit your application.

Finally, you will also need to provide a "copy" of the work to be deposited with the copyright office.

So, to summarize, what the Copyright Office maintains are: 1. Records of copyright ownership; 2. Records of copyright transfers; 3. Copies of works.

Blockchain registration

As a title ledger, a blockchain-based registry has distinct advantages over the copyright office’s database of works:

The decentralized and cryptographically secure nature of a blockchain database makes it unlikely to suffer catastrophic loss or failure, or be hacked.

The registration process is almost instantaneous and the fees are much lower than those charged by the Copyright Office.

Subsequent transactions of the work will also be recorded in real time and can be tracked on the trading network.

Given the public nature of blockchain, blockchain registration can allow more people to know that the author owns the work (this effect would not be achieved if the same work was registered on the blockchain multiple times).

However, the Copyright Office has two functions that current blockchain-based registries do not have: 1. Blockchain registrations do not have the legal presumption and special rights that the United States provides to federally registered works; 2. Blockchain registrations do not have an archiving function.

No presumption of legality or privilege

The right to enforce copyright interests in the courts in the United States is established by statute. If successful, the copyright owner is entitled to recover damages and attorneys’ fees. Blockchain registries do not have such rights unless Congress amends the Copyright Act. Congress may amend the Act in the future if blockchain registries are accepted as a method for protecting ownership and transferring information, but don’t expect it to happen now. Right now, registering works with the Copyright Office is the only way to protect rights.

However, blockchain registration and copyright office registration do not conflict with each other. There is nothing to prevent your work from being registered on the blockchain and then registered with the copyright office. The only disadvantage of this method is that the author will not be able to claim damages for infringement suffered before federal registration.

The presumption of validity of copyright registrations is also statutory, but it takes a slightly different position, as the defendant can always rebut the presumption of copyright registrations with contrary evidence. Indeed, the earlier timestamped registration in the conflicting blockchain registrations is likely to be used as evidence in the defendant's defense, leading the court to refute the plaintiff's presumption of copyright registration. Therefore, once the court is aware of the blockchain registration, the blockchain record should be able to become strong evidence to prove the validity of the copyright.

No archiving feature?

The Library of Congress was largely driven by the Copyright Office's filing of "copies" of works and copyright registrations. It also serves the function of maintaining information about the ownership of works in the registration record, so that information about the ownership of works can be found in the future and then compared with the original work.

One of the purposes of blockchain technology is to establish an indelible "link" between the original work and the ownership information by creating a digital signature or encrypted "hash" on the digital file and the owner's identity information. It can be said that compared with the "link" established between the copy of the work and the ownership information stored in a centralized system (such as the Library of Congress and the Copyright Office), the "link" established by the blockchain is more difficult to change.

However, there are a few things to note: blockchain registries do not require a copy of the digital content, but rather a digital fingerprint of the content’s ownership or registration information. This means that in order to compare potentially infringing works to original works, some overlays on the blockchain system are required. Therefore, it is necessary for the corporate entities that provide blockchain registries to provide archiving services for the basic documents.

Currently, companies offering blockchain solutions appear to be using different approaches to handling archiving. Some companies are placing digital content in their cloud systems, while others are using separate distributed systems such as the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS).

You might think that different vendors using different methods could lead to another kind of conflict over blockchain registries, where the blockchain registries are different from the copyright office registries and there could be conflicting registrations (multiple registrations for the same work). This would indeed lead to controversy. Unless a single blockchain registry becomes dominant, some authors will be reluctant to use blockchain registries because there is no centralized system to help them resolve conflicts.

This criticism may be a bit overstated, though. Given the immutable timestamps provided by blockchain registries, it will be virtually impossible for anyone to “game” the system, and all ownership disputes should be easily resolved. Additionally, interoperability between platforms, or agreement between companies on standards for identifying and resolving similar or identical works, would certainly help.

What’s the next step?

Given the large number of unregistered works (especially those that are small, short, and amateur), cheap blockchain registration becomes a good option for authors, who can create a "timestamp" for their works, providing a durable and stable attribute for these works until the works are profitable. From this point, the blockchain can publicly record the information of some works that may never be recorded otherwise.

You can imagine a dual-track system being developed: blockchain registries for small, short, or amateur works, and federal registrations for more substantial original works, such as novels, plays, and films. Of course, there may be overlap between the two: authors of shorter works may eventually want to obtain additional federal registration protection in order to gain sufficient fame or value; similarly, authors of longer works may first register on the blockchain to assert their ownership of the work.

This crossover might even be a catalyst: the Copyright Office might eventually consider allowing works to be registered on a blockchain first, and then easily flow into the federal registry when authors need additional protection for their works (assuming, of course, that Congress doesn’t directly provide protection for works registered on a blockchain).

As a side note, one is curious whether the Copyright Office will consider using decentralized blockchain technology itself in the future, as it begins implementing plans to overhaul its IT systems:

Once implemented, this IT initiative will change many existing paradigms. Copyright registration will move away from large proprietary software products managed by the Copyright Office to a model that allows third parties to create a variety of products through open source platforms that can interoperate seamlessly with Copyright Office systems.

While the Copyright Office may ultimately determine that decentralized registries do not make sense given their functions and roles, if the Copyright Office is to move forward, it would be wise to consider this burgeoning new technology holistically. Given the speed at which technology changes, these stakeholders are likely to engage in constructive discussions about how these different forms of registration can coexist or relate to each other.

Original article: http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/could-a-blockchain-based-registry-ever-99770/
By Lance Koonce
Compiled by: Kyle
Source (translation): Babbitt Information (http://www.8btc.com/blockchain-based-registry)