In this series by ASCII, which collaborates with the Japan Patent Office on efforts to bring startups closer to intellectual property, and IP Tech Patent Business Corporation, which supports Tech companies with IP (intellectual property), Tech business players should know about intellectual property. We will deliver the points.
In this article, we will introduce an overview of NFTs, which have been attracting attention these days and are expected to further expand the market in the future, and points to keep in mind when obtaining related patents.
table of contents
Recent status of NFT services Outline of NFT (technical explanation) Introduction of services in Japan and overseas Points to note when acquiring patents Reference (next page): Introduction of patents granted in Japan
Current status of NFT services
Recently, services using NFT are attracting attention. NFT (Non-Fungible Token) refers to digital data with a non-fungible certificate and ownership certificate in a broad sense, and in a narrow sense, images and videos with the owner clarified. Refers to the digital content of.
Specifically, the history of digital content transactions is stored on the blockchain. This clarifies its owner and makes it possible to add asset value to digital content such as text, images, and videos that were previously easily copied and diverted.
The market for services using NFTs is expanding rapidly, and the target is wide-ranging, such as games, digital art, and virtual space. Also known as the first year of NFT, it is predicted that the market size will reach $ 1.5 billion in 2021, which has become widespread globally.
Figure 1: NFT market size trends
(Quote: Trends related to NFT (Non-Fungible Token): The Japan Research Institute, Limited Advanced Technology Lab)
Outline of NFT (technical explanation)
In NFT, digital contents and owner information are linked by having smart contracts, which are protocols implemented on the blockchain, execute processing based on transaction information input to Dapps (autonomous decentralized application). We will issue the tokens and record the token owner information on the blockchain. This will record the owner associated with the token as the owner of the digital content.
Users can freely transfer (resell) the ownership of their digital content to other users, and with the transfer of ownership, the owner information linked to the token is rewritten to new owner information. Will be.
Until now, it was common for digital content to be managed on an external server, as shown in Figure 2 below. On the other hand, if the digital content disappears due to the suspension of the management service of the business operator that manages the server, only the information (token) that proves the ownership remains, and there is a concern that the ownership will be vacant. It seems that data structures such as incorporating the data of the above into the inside of the blockchain are also being considered.
Figure 2: Image of NFT
Introducing services at home and abroad
So what are the services that actually use NFT? Introducing some of the most well-known services overseas and the latest services in Japan.
・ CryptoKitties
It is a game that first came into the limelight as a service using Ethereum's smart contract, mating virtual cats and collecting unique cats for each user. Virtual cats transform into various forms according to the characteristics of their parent cats.
The service is said to be the first service using NFT in 2017. Immediately after its release, the cat's transaction value has improved along with the acquisition of topicality, and the maximum price is 13 million yen.
Initially it was built on Ethereum, but it is newly released on the blockchain called Flow, which was originally developed. This blockchain called Flow was developed to solve the problem called scalability that the blockchain has, which is that the time to the product increases as the number of transactions increases.
Figure 3: Example of a cat traded on CryptoKitties
(Image: CryptoKitties)
・ NBA Top Shot
This is a video version of the basketball trading card that uses the same Flow as the new CryptoKitties. The user collects a fine play video of a goal scene or a difference scene of several seconds to 10 seconds called a moment.
Popular players and great players trade at high prices, and high-priced ones can cost more than $ 10,000.
The service will be available in 2019. Transaction value in 2020 is over $ 200 million.
Figure 4: Example of moments traded on the NBA Top Shot
(Image: NBA TopShot)
・ ANIFTY
It is the latest service originating in Japan and will be operated by ANIFTY GK from July 2021.
Creators can list their creations as NFT art in ANIFTY. By applying blockchain technology and linking non-fungible tokens to each work, a part of the transaction fee will be permanently returned to the creator when the secondary sale is made. Ethereum is adopted as the part six chain.
Precautions for obtaining a patent
This time, we searched for patent information that uses NFT.
As a result, it was confirmed that patents related to NFTs have been filed since around 2017 at the latest. Considering that the NFT received attention this year (2021), it was confirmed that the application was filed relatively early. In addition, as an applicant, many applications were confirmed from businesses that are relatively small in scale and are actually developing services using blockchain. It was shared that all applications were requested for examination at an early stage from the application, within the three-year period for requesting examination. For this reason, it was confirmed that all applications were filed with a clear intention to acquire rights.
Next, as for the latest application status, since patent information will be published after a period of one and a half years, the exact number of patents has not been confirmed, but the number of patents has increased within the range that can be confirmed. There is a tendency for this to occur, and it is expected that it will continue to increase in the future.
As for the rights that can be acquired, it is considered difficult to obtain the rights only by the basic process of "management of ownership by blockchain". In fact, because of the existence of papers published in the past, the application that received the reason for refusal was confirmed.
On the other hand, in terms of what kind of data input is used as a trigger to manage the ownership of digital content, it is confirmed that various rights are acquired according to the nature of the digital content to be managed. it was done. It is considered that all of these have acquired the rights within the range that is not extremely narrowed with respect to the content that was aimed at the acquisition of rights at the time of filing. For this reason, it is recognized that there is a high possibility that rights can be granted by incorporating unique processing that specializes in the nature of the content, such as processing that matches the functions of the game.
In addition, when checking the examination progress of past applications, although the processing as a blockchain is not defined in the initial scope of rights, in the process of examination, in order to claim a difference from the prior art, or a request from the examiner. In response to the indication that the description of the section is unclear, by clarifying the processing as a blockchain, multiple applications that have been granted rights have been confirmed.
Therefore, even if the blockchain is not defined in the claims in order to broaden the scope of rights, it is necessary to describe in detail the configuration and processing of the smart contract and the blockchain side in the specification. It is considered to be a preparation for the examination stage.
In any case, the number of applications is limited at the moment, and I got the impression that it may be possible to obtain rights in a relatively wide range, so if you are considering commercialization, at the earliest possible stage. It is important to prepare for the acquisition of rights.
The JPO's intellectual property and startup community site "IP BASE" (https://ipbase.go.jp/) provides various information such as basic knowledge that must be known and information on advantageous systems.
