Bitcoin API provider BitGo Commits to Defensive Patenting

The Bitcoin API provider, BitGo, recently received backlash for filing a patent for multi-sig technology the company developed. BitGo responded by announcing their adoption of the Innovator's Patent Agreement, which eliminates the ability for the company to use patents “offensively.” The company has continued to show their support for free technology by open sourcing their Chrome app today.

BitGo Co-Founder Michael Belshe, commented on the Reddit post, “First off, note that I also was the co-inventor of spdy, which has just recently become http/2.0. During the course of creating spdy, we filed a slew of patents. I, and the other engineers on the spdy team, all made sure that google was willing to give that IP away for free before we filed the patents. [...] Google came through on its promise to give away the IP.”

“We recognize the value of making technology open, mitigated with the reality that all your competitors have patents too. ” - Michael Belshe

Brave New Coin

Patent troll's bad ethics costs them a case

As it turns out, one patent troll is also really awful at ethics.
Seriously, what kind of shenanigans do you have to be up to for every single member of your in-house legal department and outside law firm to be disqualified from a case?


In 2013, Acacia Research Corp. hired Charlotte Rutherford, who’d worked in the oil industry for years, including, most relevantly for this story, at Schlumberger Limited, the world’s largest oilfield services company. Amongst Acadia’s acquired patents was the ‘319 patent which relates to Schlumberger’s 3-D oil drilling software, Petrel.

Above the Law

BitGo Accused of Seeking Patent of Bitcoin Multisig Technology

Bitcoin wallet company BitGo, Inc. is currently alleged to be making attempts to patent the Bitcoin multisig technology.

The San Francisco based company had submitted a patent request to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on February 4th last year, a document of which was published yesterday, on April 30th 2015. The document reveals BitGo’s application in which it is seeking a patent for a network device that is “configured to receive public keys, over an electronic network, of two or more second public-private keys,” something that is reportedly identical to the multisig functionality.

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