Say you had an invention but weren't ready to patent, you could make a hash of your file containing the idea, and as long as you keep that file you can prove ownership at a specific point in time that is indisputable.
Cool. I'm personally still struggling to get out of the "horseless carriage" mentality in imagining what could be done with Factom. What comes to mind now are mainly the systems and processes that already exist, but that could be made more efficient / secure / etc by using Factom. But I think things start to become interesting when imagining what
new processes / systems could be created by using Factom, which weren't previously possible.
Actually I suppose this is the conceptual challenge for a lot, or most, cryptos ... Maybe I'll ask Paul during the Q+A. Though if anyone has any ideas about what new systems / processes (not really sure of the word, even) could be created with the use of Factom -- that didn't exist before, b/c they couldn't --I'd be curious to hear.