LES Annual Meeting: Blockchain Events
The Licensing Executives Society (U.S.A. and Canada) will host its
2018 Annual Meeting
in Boston, October 14-17, 2018. Over 500
intellectual property professionals are expected to attend, representing
a highly-diverse community of IP
professionals and decision makers
who collaborate across multiple industries and sectors.
As in every LES Annual Meeting, the content is carefully selected and curated from among hundreds of submissions. As the incoming Chair of the High-Tech Sector, I was a member of the organizing committee for this Annual Meeting, and one of our goals was to make sure emerging technologies and upcoming trends are well represented in the program. If you are planning to attend, I wanted to draw your attention to a series of events featuring
Blockchain technology, focusing on the intersection of Blockchain and IP. Below are some of the Blockchain event highlights (I will be participating as a speaker or moderator in the first three):
Monday, Oct. 15, 12:00pm-1:30pm: Deals of Distinction Award
- The LES Deals of Distinction Award is an annual industry sector award program of LES, which aspires to recognize worthy licensing deals and promote creative and innovative solutions to business issues involving contracts. This year's High-Tech Sector's award goes to Blockstack's $50 Million Token Presale. Blockstack is building a decentralized internet base on the blockchain network.
Monday, Oct. 15, 4:30pm-5:30pm: Fireside Chat with Blockstack - the High-Tech Sector's Deals of Distinction Award Recipient -
Founded in 2013, Blockstack has been building a decentralized blockchain architecture for publishing on the internet, one designed around user control. In late 2017, Blockstack has raised $50 million through the sale of 440 million tokens. The sale attracted leading investors - including Union Square Ventures (USV), Lux Capital and F-Prime Capital Partners- to fund Blockstack's particular vision for a decentralized web built on blockchain technology. This fireside chat will feature representatives from Blockstack and its investor group, who will discuss the dynamics and outcome of this deal as a new funding vehicle in the blockchain ecosystem
.
Tuesday, Oct. 16, 3:00pm-4:00pm: Blockchain: Early Stage Technology Valuation in a Media Hyped Market
-
From the price of cryptocurrency valuations to claims that distributed ledger technology will affect seemingly every industry, blockchain technology has pervaded media headlines over the past year. Nevertheless, the market environment is still fraught with many unknowns regarding how this technology will create value for its innovators and investors. This panel will provide a basic understanding of blockchain and the market and legal trends affecting value. The panel will focus on how to quantify value in early-stage technologies, like blockchain, in light of difficult to predict regulatory environments and nascent business models.
Wednesday, Oct. 17, 8:45am-10:00am: IP Protection in the Blockchain Industry -
The discussion will examine how various entities operating in the blockchain ecosystem approach IP rights. The panel will provide perspectives from cryptocurrency developers and exchanges, as well as from the financial services industry. We will hear how the blockchain community reconciles open source sharing versus proprietary protection, and understand what aspects of blockchain technology may ripe for licensing going forward.