Meta Joins Crypto Open Patent Alliance

Meta has become a member of the Crypto Open Patent Alliance. This group consists of several prominent companies in the cryptocurrency space that have pledged not to enforce certain crypto patents. 

“Growth and Innovation”

Meta has joined the Crypto Open Patent Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to cryptocurrency innovation led by Block, Jack Dorsey’s payments solutions company formerly known as Square. Among COPA’s stated goals is to “remove patents as a barrier to growth and innovation.”

The consortium includes more than 25 other companies, including Coinbase, Microstrategy, Uniswap, and Kraken. According to the Crypto Open Patent Alliance’s general manager, Max Sills, joining the group represents a company’s pledge that it will not enforce its “core cryptocurrency patents.”

Although several major companies count themselves as members of COPA, Meta is the largest to date in terms of the number of patents it holds, according to Sills. 

Meta’s head of licensing and transactions, Shayne O’Reilly, will represent Meta on COPA’s board.

Emblematic of Meta’s struggles in the cryptocurrency industry is its recent $200 million sale of the technology behind its Diem stablecoin, preceded by its years-long battle with U.S. lawmakers over the stablecoin. Meta has, however, retained its digital wallet Novi, which it launched as a pilot program to certain customers in Guatemala and the United States last October. Last December, Novi launched a crypto payments feature to select users in the U.S. via WhatsApp (also owned by Meta). 

Dorsey, meanwhile has been involved in other initiatives beyond COPA that seek to push the blockchain space forward. Earlier this month, he announced the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund with the goal of helping Bitcoin developers who face legal struggles. 

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and several other cryptocurrencies.