Self-proclaimed Bitcoin creator Craig Wright’s company, nChain, is seeking to hire an in-house patent lawyer to keep an eye on its crypto patents, according to a new report from CoinDesk.
The applicant, who would work at the company’s London offices, must have a demonstrated interest in Blockchain and Bitcoin specifically, and also must possess at least one degree in computer science, electronics, physics, or mathematics. Additionally, the applicant must, of course, be a qualified European Patent Attorney.
Once hired, the attorney would be responsible for “patent drafting” as well as “global prosecution” for those who may violate nChain’s precious patents. The attorney will have “significant responsibility for creating and exploiting commercially valuable IP assets,” the job advertisement reads.
Is nChain About to Start Prosecuting on Its 666 Patents?
In addition to the time that Wright has spent trying to convince other people that he is, in fact, Satoshi Nakamoto (the enigmatic creator of Bitcoin), Wright has put a lot of effort into collecting patents related to blockchain technology and the Bitcoin network.
Indeed, Reuters reported in 2017 that Wright used the company that is now known as nChain (then known as EITC Holdings) to file more than 50 applications for blockchain-related patents in the UK. Neither Wright nor his firm has wasted any time since then--several weeks ago, nChain's strategic advisory board chairman Jimmy Nguyen said that the company had filed exactly 666 patent applications.
The patents range throughout a wide variety of blockchain-based platforms and applications, including “methods and systems for the efficient transfer of entities on a peer-to-peer distributed ledger,” “implementing logic gate functionality using blockchain,” and “operating system for blockchain IOT devices.”
From the outside, it appears as if nChain is gearing up to become what is pejoratively known as a ‘patent troll,’ a term that Google dictionary defines as “a company that obtains the rights to one or more patents in order to profit by means of licensing or litigation, rather than by producing its own goods or services.”
To be fair, however, Wright’s company has not taken any legal action to prosecute on any of its patents up to this point. Additionally, nChain does offer a number of professional services and has created several open-source projects, including Bitcoin SV, Nakasendo, and Teranode.
All the same, Wright has developed a reputation as a rather bombastic figure in the cryptocurrency community. Wright became embroiled in a rather ugly public spat that resulted in the creation of a new cryptocurrency based off of Bitcoin Cash last November.
