Peer Mountain Joins Google Founded LOT Network

By George Nicholson, Content Manager, TokenMarket

August 6, 2018 — Road Town, British Virgin Islands — Peer Mountain joins the LOT Network as its 259th member. The License On Transfer (LOT) Network is a non-profit community of companies providing the protection from patent assertion entities (PAE’s), commonly known as patent trolls. Companies that join the LOT Network, pledge to give all other members an automatic free license to any of their patents that is acquired by a patent assertion entity.

The LOT Network membership has grown in size and stature in the past year with the addition of Yum!, Oracle, Volkswagen, Vizio, Salesforce, Tesla, eBay, Cisco, Alibaba, Amazon, Daimler, and about 80 start-up companies. The LOT Network is now able to permanently immunise members from over 1.2 million assets in the hands of a PAE. Following the announcement, Marc Kaufman, Co-Founder of the Blockchain IP Council, said;

“Patent filings related to blockchain technology have increased tremendously over the past several years. Many of these patents are likely to end up in the hands of patent assertion entities, sometimes referred to as ‘patent trolls.’ LOT provides a mechanism whereby members are substantially protected from patent assertions by patent assertion entities. Peer Mountain’s membership in LOT is a significant step in expanding the advantages of LOT to players in blockchain eco systems.”

This is an additional element of protection for the Peer Mountain Protocol as the Peerchain patent cannot be utilised by any entity looking to patent hoard. Peer Mountain is now fully aligned with over 250 companies in fighting patent trolls and share protection of their patents through the LOT Network. On the announcement of Peer Mountain joining the LOT Network, Jed Grant, CEO at Peer Mountain, said:

“We’re honoured to join the LOT Network and share in the fight against patent trolls. As the Peerchain protocol is patent pending, this is a great way to ensure that the patent would remain beneficial for the Peer Mountain community and ecosystem.”

The consortium was founded in 2014 by Google, Canon and the multinational software companies Red Hat and SAP. LOT has also accepted high profile American banks such as JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, with TD Bank Group becoming the latest financial institution to join.