Bitcoin company Coinbase applies for nine patents including exchange, what the hell?

According to coindesk, Bitcoin service company Coinbase has submitted nine patent applications to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

According to the application overview recently published by the Patent and Trademark Office, the patent applications submitted by Coinbase include "Bitcoin hot wallet", "instant exchange", "Bitcoin exchange", "Bitcoin reward button", "personal vault", "user private key control application", "Bitcoin cold storage private key split application", "Application for sending Bitcoin to an email address" and "Application combining off-chain transactions with on-chain transactions."

Although these are published by the US Patent and Trademark Office, Coinbase's applications are currently awaiting approval. According to Eitan Jankelewitz, a lawyer at Sheridans Law Firm in London, this process may take several years.

He told CoinDesk:

"The waiting process is to determine whether these inventions can be patented (some things, such as abstract concepts, cannot be patented). Then the novelty of the invention becomes the key. If the invention is known to the public, then it will not be patented. It must be new."

He continued:

“If anyone could come up with this new product, it wouldn’t be patentable.”

In addition, the USPTO also allows the public to oppose the application of such patents.

Patents in the cryptocurrency space

Coinbase, the bitcoin company that has raised $106.7 million to date, is not the only company to have filed for cryptocurrency-related patents.

Just yesterday, CoinDesk reported that Bank of America had applied for a patent for a cryptocurrency wire transfer system.

In addition, companies including MasterCard and IBM have also applied for patents related to cryptocurrency. In May last year, online shopping giant Amazon also obtained a Bitcoin-related cloud computing patent.

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