thinkbig74

It looks like someone is finally spending some serious money trying to take down an nChain patent. This US patent originates from the very earliest of nChain's filings, GB priority applications for which were filed in the name of EITC Holdings Limited (later assigned to nChain Licensing AG) on 23 February 2016. Each GB application was prepared and filed by Craig Wright's favourite unqualified patent attorney and has Wright and Stephane Savanah as joint inventors. Claim 1 of the US patent reads: 1. A method of using a blockchain to control a process executing on a computing resource, the method comprising: executing a loop on the computing resource; and using a state of the blockchain to influence the execution of the loop, wherein the process: i) is an automated voting process; or ii) comprises a distribution or an allocation of one or more tokens to a voter, wherein each token is associated with an amount of cryptocurrency. The request for re-examination filed by Unified Patents (presumably on behalf of an unspecified entity) is in some ways similar to an opposition to a European patent but formulated very differently in a more formalistic way and written in the form of an opinion from a technical expert informed by the basics of patentability (i.e. novelty and inventive step in this case). In brief, the request argues that the patent claims something that would already be known to the skilled person. DAO voting on Ethereum is mentioned as being something that would be within the scope of claim 1, or at least would make it obvious. All claims of the patent are attacked, so it looks like nChain will have to put some effort into defending it. The US patent has several family members, including a European patent (EP3420675) that was granted in March 2020 and which remains in force in the UK, France and Germany. Claim 1 of the European patent is, however, considerably more narrow in scope.