So, I’ve always wondered the following about Cardano’s philosophy w/ regards to patents –
Instead of taking the pure open-source approach and letting every company and person in the world use the codebase, why would Cardano not just put various pieces of IP behind a patent and then preserve the option to selectively enforce that patent if a centralized actor started using the Cardano/IOHK’s IP for nefarious things? (For example, if a Big Tech company copies the base of the Atala PRISM system and then alters the codebase to put backdoors in to remove various ID protections, etc…)
As I understand, IP protections such as patents grant you the option (but not the obligation) to enforce them.
I can see several advantages to a program that grants millions of free “licenses” to developers around the world but prevents a situation where a large tech company just ends up ripping off a lot of Cardano’s IP and then using it for nefarious means.
Without the options to pursue such protections, aren’t there a variety of entities that can actually justuse Cardano’s tech and developments against Cardano?