Blockchain’s Role in Protecting Intellectual Property Rights

[Music] good afternoon everyone likewise thank you so much for being here today and joining us we truly appreciate it my name is Mel Hashmi I'm crossborder manager at HB 71 and I will be moderating today's session you guys are up now it's exciting Maya we can hear you okay well again thank you for joining our session today we will be discussing blockchain's role in ensuring IP is protected across protection rights so we'll be deep diving into the world of digital assets particularly on IP and how it is revolutionizing sorry blockchain and how it is revolutionizing IP protection rights uh so we'll dive into the digital assets realm and we have a expert panel that I'm very happy to have uh here with us today that will be educating us on this current land landscape of Ip protection as well as its future foresight moving forward for the next 5 to 10 years well thank you gentlemen for joining us today I would like to int uh introduce each of one of you I think the best way to do it was would be for each of you to introduce yourselves for two to three minutes uh tell us about your Innovation your blockchain technology and how is it enhancing IP protection rights okay cool uh I can go first uh my name is thank you very much for having me today uh I'm a director of sonum uh sonum is the chain started started lab I'm CEO is developing together with Sony group uh obviously Sony group has a lot of ips and uh we are making the entertainment ler of the next internet and it is ecdm too so we are making the infrastructure to on board billion people on chain uh yeah thank you very much please um just as why I'm the co-founder of story and we're building um a blockchain that's focused on intellectual property and we basically think that with the Advent of AI uh basically IP is at a huge Crossroad every AI is basically training and remixing your IP at a speed of light and basically producing all these uh uh you know um AI generated IPS and it's really not basically attributing compensating uh you know uh basic returning and licensing the IP in the right way so we want to fix this my name is yat I'm chairman co-founder of Animo Brands our company today that's probably most known for having done a lot of investments in the nft blockchain space particularly on the IP side of things over 540 portfolio companies particularly interested in IP protection is one area but the other one also is an original native digital IP that can be owned essentially by the end users kind of what we see with boures and Pudgy Penguins all part of our group um as a way to sort of have shared ownership uh in the the space um so yeah thank you so much gentlemen uh my first question to will be addressed to all of you uh given your expertise in in this space and as blockchain innovators what do you believe or how do you believe blockchain is enhancing transparency and Security in what in what Manner and if you could please give us a real use case example where this has been successfully implemented please we'll start with you oh yeah I can go first so uh when it comes to transparency right and uh we are making entertainment ler the next to internet and uh you know we believe that everyone is a Creator and we would like to empower creators rather than a specific company or specific product and uh when when Creator makees something you know let's say movie 100 people or thousands of people make one movie right but uh we people only know the director even though 100 people are inol D so what we would like to make is the creator D which Empower creators and individual by making so uh we can we can you know prove the you know the skill and the creative creativity of the individual on chain so we need this kind of solution to increase transparency and increase the the you know the Loyalty distribution um um IP management registration and these kind of use cases wonderful s y same question for you yeah if as you see but at the moment the hottest topic is AI and AI runs in IP not only just compute so I mean AI exists because it's training all the all the original IPS that you are producing as a Creator and what we do is we make IP programmable so we turn intellectual property that's wrapped up in legal contracts into IP Lego so every single IP on story protocol uh story block chain actually has a licensing royalty sharing terms that's uh that's actually legally enforceable offchain uh embedded into each piece of Ip uh so we now have about 100 apps that's a everything from Fashion to gaming so one app is called ablo it has everything from Bine to Crocs as IP is registered and there are some of their newest IPS uh you know is registered and anyone can actually make a derivative fashion out of the latest balama shoes or Croc shoes and actually produce it and sell it and actually share the revenue with these fashion brands or another company is called punk land it's a 2 million ma u 2 million um user based um uh gaming company in out of uh Korea and basically what they do is they have uh you know it's like Roblox but it's really without any codeing skills with just help of AI with various gaming asset you can start producing uh games really really quickly but all the gaming assets are now has embedded license in royalty sharing terms so if you make a game character game design you can actually then use it for you know if someone makes it and another gamer can start making using other game assets and you with the AI they can create a game very very quickly so what we do is IP you don't need to talk to lawyers we don't need to talk to any middleman you can actually fork and remix all these IPS with the help of AI and every all the royalties and attribution will be actually kept on blockchain wonderful uh so I think uh maybe just to um touch bit what Sy is talking about you know the way that he describes sort of I guess ugc and mashup culture is basically how we think of tokenization and network effects so intellectual property for us and the proliferation of that actually expands through ugc and they actually become Network effects and that's actually what is the first part that we think blockchain really enables so you can build communities essentially on chain in a manner that you couldn't do before because they have shared ownership in it and that actually expands it and we saw this with digitally native IP that projects like involved in like paji penguins for instance with nft projects or board apes or land and sandbox that's one one example but the second thing that we also focused on and we do this with uh open campus and the educational side is it unlocks intellectual property rights in areas that wasn't possible before so imagine what the music industry would be like if there was no IP protection there would be no Taylor Swift there would be no Michael Jackson none of that would work and the reason why it was possible because it was a legal framework Right There Was You protected through a lawyer the patent office all that kind of stuff um but it only made sense if you had a certain amount of Revenue attached cuz the cost of actually protecting it legally was just too expensive right to go through the conveyancing the legal cost everything but now through blockchain and basically with nfts for for Value less than a dollar you can actually start protecting your intellectual property so I'll give you two examples one of them all part of our portfolio one of them is sounds Whimsical it's like dance moves so they called Dance fight it's a company that basically protects their dance moves on chain and the and and it sounds funny but the story was that the dancer had his moves ripped off by epic a game company and the dancer basically saw his moves as an emoji on fortnite and so he basically said hey that's my moves um I love the game but can I get something for it and epic was like no prove it because he didn't have a way of doing it and he didn't have money for a lawyer to go and say can I can I do that so that was the birth of dance fight because basically dancers were able to protect their moves on chain to prove that they were the ones to do it and then you know basically we receive royalties and stuff from that so that's kind of one example the second example is teachers so teachers create educational content um you know all over the world and they can receive a little bit of Revenue share for it maybe like you places like Venezuela maybe like five or $10 a year very small money so it's not enough to protect it as an intellectual property asset but if it becomes an asset someone can now buy it for 10 or 20% yield so that 10 or $20 yielding asset can now be worth $500 that by the way is the birth of wealth generation that we see with real estate or shares or also typ assets and so that's the foundation of digital property rights if you have a way to have property in something then you can have actual capital appreciation and capital value attached to it right and that's how we see the frame and basically um you know we we try everything our mission is to deliver digital property rights for that purpose wonderful thank you so much s uh could you tell us a little more about how story protocol is revolutionizing IP protection in the age of AI yeah so I I think I've already touched upon it in the previous kind of comments but basically a lot of people um I mean there's one way is to seize and disis all the things that you see uh that groc to you know open AI making that's similar to your IP but another way is to basically say I mean uh you know it's impossible for corent centralized legal system to uh you know do one-on-one negotiation with all the IP makers to actually license this IP so it's like impossible for open AI to all these IP creators to do go out to like million creators and start basically negotiating against one all these creators so what what we say that the Baseline is that everyone should declare through blockchain that you own the IP but not only say that you own the IP but also declare the licensing and royalty sharing terms around the IP and just embed that on your IP so it's almost like having a QR code for every single intellectual property or data points in the world and even especially for uh you know uh we're um you know for some AI model companies that are actually producing uh you know bunch of a assets they can kind of kind of actually even the model the agent can set the terms around all the outputs uh how they can be used and so on and so forth so once that's happened now anyone can just go uh uh with interact with the apps that are actually powered by our ecosystem and actually start forking and remixing and creating different derivatives like the fashion app that I just mentioned where people are making you know a bunch of bom derivatives to uh Crocs derivatives um as their own fashion items and sell that on Instagram as a as a drop as a drop down by by uh sharing the shopable link on there so or another app is called hook music uh which actually has licensed uh Downtown Music uh all the catalog so now anyone can go into uh hook music and click different music beats and music pieces and create AI mesh ups and then actually when they're monetizing it through Spotify SoundCloud everything at the back end actually gets shared in terms of Revenue share royalty sharing so yeah so I I think what we do is you know it's not about just like you know season desisting but actually try to make it easy uh like how Spotify has done with listening to music around licensing and uh remixing and making a mesh up with AI with your IP thank you uh s back to you so as a layer two chain can you tell us more about what sets sonum apart from other L2 Solutions and in in terms of leveraging Ip specifically yeah um I think one major unique things of the sonum is uh Sony group involvement into the chain uh I would say I I would say the the first eum layer 2 or measure layer one chain developed by big company right um I made a lot of a mistake but uh we three people like us start from Tech and try to find the customers but for us we have a customers potentially billions then we are deciding which to develop so by doing so we would like to go mainstream so we are saying GM because because GM stands for good morning right right now but after sonum we would like to make it as go mainstream so right now less than 1% of the people are using blockchain in the daily Liv and uh mainly Reach people or you know tech people because blockchain is not accessible so we would like to focus on the the user experience and customize experience to um Empower creators and eventually we would like to on board billion the people who have never used blockchain before yeah this is what we would like to do and the entertainment is pretty much uh important domain to on board more people already web3 is already recognized as the finance layer of the next internet and I think entertainment is the next uh Fiat currencies sometime you know compete against crypto vice versa but uh web3 technology can be penetrated into the entertainment industry such as concert or such as music movie and so on and the user does not need to know NFD the user does not need to know even sonum when they interact so we are focusing on the the customer experience and user experience to empower creators wonderful now it's very important goes without saying uh for Mass adoption one would need uh customer the customer experience and the customer interface to be on par so of course that goes into play uh back to you yat so an an anima Co brands has partnered with traditional IP firms such as tnb media Global and Lamborghini uh so if you could tell us a little more about the challenges that you have faced and encountered when it comes to adopting traditional IP systems and integrating that I mean we've been we've worked with hundreds of Brands right like instance on Sandbox you've got like Gucci and you've got like Adidas and all the type of Brands so we've had a history really that's why we called animoca Brands right because the brands part is actually the history of working with all the thirdparty media Brands whether it's in gaming culture entertainment I think the biggest challenge that IP brands have today um in web 3 is the concept of ownership because the business model of an IP company is to rent your brand and then you generate value from that renting and then you g relicense it to someone else and we see this in the gaming space we I sort of have have the license to use maybe um let's say the Lamborghini in a game in web 3 the assets that you buy ought to own be owned by the user because it's actually something that the user gets to own but in the web 2 model they're just licensing it so after 3 years of the license is done the game is done and you no longer have the rights to use it and the people who bought the assets actually can't use them in traditional space whereas in web 3 you have to own them and I think this is the paradigm shift that a lot of the uh traditional IP licensing companies struggle with but the ones who get it like for instance BMW and um and and Lamborghini for instance and these typ of brands are beginning to understand that actually the core of what makes an IP powerful is a shared sense of ownership so for instance you know in the older days we used to think of a centralized model of distribution IP like a movie and you have a big advertising and so on but today you can't launch a movie without it being on Tik Tok and in YouTube and everything else and when people make mashups and create content and by doing so you're actually creating a sense of a Shar ownership even if they don't own the IP and what web 3 does it actually gives you that sense of ownership and gives you that agency and then you with that you have the ability to become a true Advocate because they have a stake in it right and I think that's the future of Ip generally speaking and we think the most powerful IP brands in the future are the ones who are willing to share the rights of their brands to others not just rent all right we're almost out of time I would love a one more question for each of you if you could quickly tell us on your opinion what are the biggest challenges currently when it comes to the legal and regulative Authority with utilizing blockchain for IP what do you think needs to change and change fast in order for us to expedite this Mass adoption I see that last this question was yeah maybe I'll start I think the big one is um I think especially under this new regime right um you know with with with Trump and the new cabinet I think a lot of the concerns around particularly nfts which were considered these type of stores of intellectual property are I think you know the concerns around them being potential Securities were probably away so I think that's one I think the rest of the world but is not really looking at intellectual property and nfts in a regulatory sense most of them are leaving it into essentially governance by essentially um the community and the companies themselves and I actually think nfts um and those type of IP rights are going to be more covered by consumer protection than through the SEC it makes more sense right it's kind of like you buy a car and it doesn't drive okay that's consumer protection that's not a security breach right and I think because it's tokenized and has a financial value it's sometimes gets confused but I think Regulators getting much smarter about it for instance in Hong Kong Singapore it's very clear in those places that nfts and IPS are very different category and actually not regulated by the financial authorities thank you anything You' like to add yeah we have a pretty I mean things on digital native IPS are slightly easier because they're born out of it but at the same time we have actually we're exploring some of the companies on top of our blockchain is exploring intellectual property rwa so example of that is token in BTS song or black pink song or Justin Bieber song and actually let's say you buy Justin Bieber's peaches or sweto malama like a classic song for $10 million and let's say you get a 7% yield every year and it's this is already being done by uh funds like agnosis in the London Stock Exchange that just got bought by Blackstone and many other there's a huge music catalog businesses out there but like except for majority of countries out there besides uh you know u a few countries actually uh it's it's um it's hard to is this a security commodity that kind of issue is not really really defined and there's a lot of Ip asset that generates cash flow Financial value like this uh like music U so how it when actually you tokenize and actually allow for Action ownership uh for for users uh actually that's what um these ipwa Protocols are doing so they're what they're trying to start with is actually just Geo blocking some of the countries uh that that are very um you know gray on the gray area around this so that's one of the things you know that really need to be clarified if I could just quickly add I think there's distinctions right if there's an IP which has like a royalty component in many jurisdictions it would be considered a security but can go under a securitized sort of framework but the one component that seems to be outside of that is owning the IP in itself so you see this with board Apes for instance if I own the image of the board ape I have all the rights to basically use it you see that in in in sort of burger shops and shoes and fashion designs the ownership of that IP is owned by you and you're the one making it work and by buying the nft you have that right that sits outside of a security framework because you're working to make money from it but it's not passive in terms of an income right so I think there's ways around and by way these paradigms weren't possible today before uh and and as a result IP development on these IP brands are much bigger because you have an army of thousands of owners of nfts that become your agents rather than hiring thousands of employees to basically do the work for you thank you so much I'm going to have to end it there thank you gentlemen for your expertise and your insights it's very exciting to see all of the things that that blockchain will be unlocking for us in the near future thank you all for your kind attention and thank you to ad FW for organizing such a wonderful event and finally I love to give a final shout out to our partners hashed that have really delivered and building something special from and out of Abu Gabi thank you all for for attending [Music] world