Do Patent Filings from eBay and Western Union Pose a Threat to Bitcoin?
In recent months, there has been no shortage of potentially alarming headlines detailing how mainstream financial and tech giants such as eBay, IBM and JPMorgan may be looking to enter or impact the bitcoin space with strategic patent filings. The most recent company to enter these ranks was Colorado-based remittance giant Western Union, which received a patent on 1st April that reports have suggested would give the company a claim to a key aspect of the bitcoin industry - the exchange of alternative currencies. Despite the sensational headlines, however, it has remained unclear as to what....
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Multinational e-commerce giant eBay has filed two cryptocurrency-related patent applications. Published by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) last week, the applications were both submitted on 18th April last year. According to the filings, eBay wants to patent a "distributed cryptocurrency unauthorised transfer monitoring system" and a "distributed cryptocurrency reputation system". Ebay's filings come after the USPTO published Coinbase's applications for nine bitcoin-related products and 21 Inc's filing for a digital currency mining circuitry patent. Speculation about eBay's....
Western Union, that stalwart of American Logistics, that company that was so dismissive of Bitcoin, has been granted a patent on a virtual money exchange. They do say that the best gamekeepers are former poachers, so let's look at the facts. On the first of April (yes, April Fool's Day) of this year, the US Patent Office granted Western Union a patent on an exchange for "alternative currencies." The patent (8,688,563) is technically for "Alternative value exchange systems and methods." And while it was filed in October 2009 - nearly a year after the original Bitcoin paper - it was before....
Gift giving during the holidays just took on a whole new meaning. eBay, the parent company of PayPal, filed patent application20130339188, "Gift Token" with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on June 18, 2012. The USPTO published the application on December 19, 2013. The technology was invented by itsengineers from Tamilnadu, Indiaand assigned to eBay Inc. of San Jose, California. The innocuous sounding application "Gift Token" was probably written in such a way as to shield trade secrets from competitive intelligence gathering. It is common for companies to obfuscate....
This essay is an updated chapter from Luis Buenaventura’s Reinventing Remittances with Bitcoin, available for free in e-book and print form now. One of the most common questions asked at industry conferences is why Western Union or Moneygram don’t just use Bitcoin themselves. If they did, they could eliminate the potential threat posed by the young Bitcoin remittance start-ups who are out there trying to eat their lunch. Theoretically, Western Union could just throw R&D resources at the problem and come up with a large-scale version of what companies like Bitspark in Hong Kong, Payphil....
Financial services companies Paypal and Western Union have each filed three new trademark applications covering a wide range of crypto services. Paypal’s applications are also for the payments giant’s logo.
Paypal’s New Trademark Filings for Crypto Services
Paypal Inc. has filed three new trademark applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Mike Kondoudis, a USPTO-licensed trademark attorney, tweeted Monday:
Paypal has filed trademark applications for Paypal and its ‘overlapping Ps’ logo. The apps claim plans....