Quote from: llama on July 03, 2013, 01:18:58 AM

Hey folks. I'm glad to see some of the conversations that have been happening lately on this subject. I think it's extremely important to have these discussions regarding how bitcoin will interact with intellectual property law in the US and internationally, and what, if anything, can be done about it. We've all recently seen IP litigation that we do not like, and there is a growing consensus that US IP law needs to be updated to better suit modern innovation.

Though I know little about IP law, we registered our name as a trademark and filed a patent on the Bitbills production process on the advice of our lawyers and advisors. As far as we've been advised, it is standard process for a small company with a single flagship product to seek these kinds of protection.

If you haven't already, I encourage you to read the parts of our patent application that have been published [1]. There's a lot of debate going on about what it does and does not say, and the best way to fix that is to read it for yourself. I also strongly encourage you to read some of the other patents dealing with bitcoin products and innovations, of which there are hundreds [2]. Note that many of these have been in fact issued, which makes them more interesting than the applications. In fact I'm a bit bewildered at how much attention this particular application has gotten in light of the others, but I'm certainly glad that the community is beginning to have these discussions about bitcoin and IP law.

[1] http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair
[2] http://www.google.com/patents?q=bitcoin

I think what this is more about is that this patent seems to be calming broad ownership to the entire concept of cold "offline wallets", which is not only absurd, but sickening to those who believe all parts of Bitcoin should be free and open, not killed off by patent lawyers and greedy companies.

Can you explain what the intent of Bitbills is with this? It seemed from things I have read so far you would like anyone that creates a cold wallet product or service should have to license this technology from Bitbills, which is horse crap frankly.

Those links you provided do not provide anything useful, can you show something else?