InvArch EduSeries 3: Web3’s Super Highway & The Future Of Transporting IP Rights.
Welcome to the InvArch EduSeries: a series of articles introducing the significance of the InvArch network, explaining its technologies, & highlighting the dire problems it solves!
Last week, we kicked things off by describing the issues of IP rights plaguing the world today in the InvArch EduSeries 1: The IP War Zone & Innovation Graveyard We Live In. We followed up by introducing the solutions to these problems in the InvArch EduSeries 2: Blockchain’s Bright Light & A Shining Future For IP Assets. Continuing our journey, we dive into the InvArch EduSeries 3: Web3’s Super Highway & The Future Of Transporting IP Rights. We will take a closer look at how InvArch alleviates the congestion of managing IP rights and how InvArch streamlines mundane processes to provide a new vehicle for transporting (and fractionalizing) IP rights.
Congested Roadways: The Crumbling Infrastructure of IP Management.
Let’s clarify an important distinction between the exclusive ownership of an NFT & the legal ownership of creative work. As noted in previous InvArch EduSeries,
“NFTs are unique digital certificates of ownership recorded on a blockchain network. More basically, an NFT represents a non-interchangeable unit of data or a “one of a kind” digital asset. To the broader public, it’s essential to understand that NFTs are fundamentally different from the actual JPEGs that have taken the world by storm. It’s not the metadata (JPEG) of an NFT that is “one-of-a-kind”; it’s the unique content identifier (CID) linking your NFT & its content that serves as an immutable certificate of ownership over that particular instance of data pegged to your NFT.”
Again, it’s the difference between buying a Pokémon card & having the right to produce a Pokémon movie. More bluntly, as stated by Harrison Jordon in No, NFTs aren’t copyrights,
The NFT purchaser owns nothing more than a unique hash on the blockchain with a transactional record and a hyperlink to the file of the artwork.
Now, let’s expand by looking at the current landscape of copyright protection. The beauty is that the foundation for such has already been provided thanks to instances like the 1886 Berne Convention & The 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty. The problem is that the world of NFTs has become a congested roadway, a traffic jam, of ownership confusion. It is a roadway with no regulations to protect the vehicles that drive on it.
It can be viewed similarly as the world once did when cars & roadways first experienced heavy adoption. There is a lot of excitement, a lot of speeding, and a lot of fun; however, there is an evident lack of safety & standards that help enforce the protection of everybody on the roads. What we have today are NFTs being used at a fantastic pace; however, while they are new & robust, it’s essential to understand that there are bound to be accidents on the innovation freeway without any international compliance. What’s worse, none of the current cars have seat belts.
There are obscurities over rights & ownership when they should be clear, which extends far beyond the world of NFTs. Protection can be easy to find throughout the music industry for multi-million dollar artists, but for up & coming artists, shelter over their creative work is hard to enforce. In the tech community, accusations of stolen (or unauthorized use of) code are a daily occurrence. Individuals hire freelancers regularly, only to (one day) find out that the final product delivered to them is riddled with copyright infringement over images & other creative content.
The good news is the solution isn’t overly complicated. Imagine the exact car you’ve come to love, just with seat belts (and the ability to infinitely expand, but that’s a topic for another InvArch EduSeries).
The INV4 Protocol: A New Vehicle For IP Assets & IP Rights.
Let’s follow up on the foundation that has been provided through events like the Berne Convention & the WIPO Copyright Treaty and see what is missing from the current landscape of non-fungible assets: clarity.
This difference makes the InvArch network’s INV4 protocol so powerful. One of the defining Pallets of the INV4 protocol is the IPL Pallet, which stands for IP Licensing. The IPL Pallet provides a modular library of various licensing & copyright agreements that link to an IP Set.
Users can imagine a catalog of agreements for trademark Licensing, copyright licensing, & trade secret licensing. Licensing can be exclusive, non-exclusive, or be sole agreements. These agreements can be perpetual, or they can feature set terms. This catalog will also natively feature licensing agreements such as the MIT License, The Unlicense, Creative Commons, & the General Public License. The INV4 protocol will also allow the ability to upload custom licensing agreements.
Imagine if every digital asset came with an explicit licensing and/or copyright agreement attached? Now stop imagining, because it’s real & it’s the future with InvArch.
At the surface level, the IPL Pallet provides international compliance for non-fungible assets not yet achieved at the protocol level throughout Web3. However, when you dig deeper, the IPL Pallet will supercharge these agreements by enforcing agreements & limitations over IP Sets.
Additionally, thanks to the INV4 protocol, actual ownership can be fractionalized using multiple pegged fungible assets representing ownership (ARO). An ARO is (typically) reflected in the first IP Token (IPT) attached to an IP Set. The asset ID of an ARO is defined in a copyright ownership agreement, and there can be multiples of these fungible assets.
In a simple scenario, if there is 1 of these IPTs, then there is a sole owner & that owner would be whoever owns that IPT. Now with InvArch, ownership can become a lot more lucrative. Say there are 5 of these IPTs, then there are five individual tokens representing 20% of ownership each. One person could hold all five or have three of them while another individual holds the other 2. There could also be an instance where 100 of these IPTs exist, and any amount is held among various accounts.
Don’t forget, InvArch is joining the Polkadot ecosystem of Parachains. With this comes the power of interoperability of data between blockchains. The KILT protocol is a robust identity protocol for issuing self-sovereign, anonymous, verifiable credentials and decentralized identifiers (DIDs) for those who are not yet familiar. KILT also features a powerful capability: DIDsign, a powerful & decentralized take on DocuSign for applying verified signatures to documents. This means that individuals will be able to sign agreements, such as copyright agreements, using their verified signatures.
So, what’s the significance? With technologies such as those seen in InvArch & KILT, the Polkadot ecosystem will be the first & only blockchain ecosystem that features native international compliance regarding IP Assets & copyright material.
Assets On InvArch: The Superhighway of Tomorrow, Built For Today.
Intricate systems of fractional ownership over a single set of multiple assets. That is the future possible with the InvArch network & the INV4 protocol. More importantly, proper infrastructure for IP assets is on the horizon, strapped with the functionality for international compliance; dApps & marketplaces that feature internationally compliant transactions & ownership transfers of non-fungible assets.
InvArch realizes a powerful future for Web3; where NFTs aim to bridge the ownership gap, InvArch succeeds by providing the infrastructure for them to do so. With InvArch, assets are more than NFTs; they’re more than just transactional records. The INV4 protocol brings IP assets to life and takes non-fungible technology to the next level.
Digital assets can represent both their legal copyright ownership & their possessive ownership; separately managed, yet jointly connected, all recorded & stored on an immutable ledger.
Imagine a marketplace where individuals don’t just purchase a certified record of a file, but they can buy & sell the copyrights over their assets. Imagine a marketplace where transfers can be instant & even make use of applying verified signatures to copyright agreements & ownership transfers, & thus providing an internationally compliant platform for NFT sales.
Code repositories can have their use carefully licensed & developers can manage the reproduction and/or third party use of code with ease. Music producers will be able to easily manage their tracks & an array of licensing deals linked to their music. Artists & collectors can have peace of mind when conducting marketplace transactions. The INV4 protocol isn’t a revolutionary concept; it’s simply commonplace & international standards integrated with blockchain technology.
Looking Towards The Future & The Next InvArch EduSeries.
The InvArch network bridges the gap between NFTs, copyright, & international compliance. The INV4 protocol sets a common-sense standard for non-fungible digital assets that allows them to feature liquid-like composability while bringing clarity over copyrights & ownership. This technology, especially when combined with other protocols & technology native to the Polkadot ecosystem, provides an advanced & sound infrastructure for IP assets in Web 3.0. However, that is only half of the power behind the INV4 protocol.
Next week, we will dive deep into some of the most exciting InvArch tech yet, IP Tokens (IPTs) & Sub-Assets! Sub-Assets realizes the concept of multiple & separate tiers or classes of fungible assets pegged to a single IP Set. This technology, the team believes, is so powerful that it has the potential to usher in an entirely new type of economic system devised of individual layer-2 Scalable Incentivized Proof of Attendance (SIPA) protocols.
What are Sub-Assets, and what on earth is a SIPA protocol? Stay tuned for the InvArch EduSeries 4: The SIPA Revolution & A New Golden Age For Innovation to find out!
