The proliferation of blockchain, cryptocurrency, and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications in recent years has been accompanied by a surge in patent filings worldwide by blockchain tech developers. And, despite some early reluctance of national patent offices to recognize the patentability of these emerging technologies, many national patent law and patent application examination regulations have been revised in recent years to recognize their patentability. This has resulted in thousands of patents being granted worldwide for blockchain, crypto, and DeFi inventions.
A blockchain was created as a transaction ledger for the bitcoin cryptocurrency. Historically, the patent laws in most countries have deemed fintech inventions as patent ineligible business methods for lacking sufficient technical features and being merely mental processes, mathematical formulas, or methods for organizing human activity. However, a blockchain is inherently a technological system. It is a distributed ledger that consists of a growing list of electronic records that are securely linked together using cryptography and managed by a peer-to-peer computer network.
As the popularity of blockchain technology has grown and its application has expanded from the fintech sector to other industries, such as healthcare, transportation, big data, cybersecurity, and consumer electronics patent application filings for blockchain-based inventions skyrocketed worldwide. Recognizing the economic importance of blockchain technology and its inherent technical nature, many national patent offices have also revised their patent laws and examination regulations to ease the eligible subject matter threshold for blockchain inventions.
The following is a survey of national patent laws and regulations pertaining to the examination of blockchain, crypto, and DeFi technologies in the most popular patent filing jurisdictions:
United States
The United States has historically been one of the most patent…
