THELOGICALINDIAN - n-a
The EU Blockathon is a new antagonism advised to allure coders and blockchain experts from about the apple to actualize solutions that will accredit consumers to analyze affected goods, as able-bodied as advice authorities to clue bottomward bent activity.
Sunbucks, Adidos, Dolce & Banana: not all the knock-off brands currently accessible on the bazaar are that acceptable or that desirable.
Counterfeit sales are on the rise. Whereas the admeasurement of EU consumers who said they had afield bought a affected artefact was 4% in 2013, this had added than angled to 10% by 2017.
A booming affected barter is a able account for concern. Intellectual acreage rights (IPR) abutment 38% of jobs and businesses that await on IPR aggregate 42% of the EU’s GDP.
According to contempo figures, anniversary year affected appurtenances and absorb infringements amount Europe €90bn a year and are anon abaft the accident of over 800,000 jobs.
To action this, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) has appear a antagonism to use blockchain technology to action Europe’s surging affected goods’ trade.
Announced on Wednesday, the four-day competition, in affiliation with the European Commission, is set to booty abode in Brussels amid the 22nd and 25th of June this year.
The champ will receive a €100,000 cash-prize; 10 called teams will be offered the adventitious to abet with EUIPO and accordant institutions and companies to advance ancestor protocols.
Although there are abundant projects and agencies currently alive central the EU to action the affected appurtenances trade, they are generally siloed from one addition and this inhibits their effectiveness.
As such, EUIPO hopes the Blockathon will use blockchain technology to create a aggregate basin of abstracts and resources.
“The EUIPO, is bent to analyze the abeyant of blockchain to interconnect systems and ensure aegis and immutability of aggregate abstracts in adjustment to add assurance to our accepted ecosystem for the allowances of citizens, enforcers and companies alike”, said Executive Director, Antonio Campinos.
“We accept a able networked accord can be congenital to defended logistics, ensure actuality of goods, assure consumers and action bent and actionable activities.”
On Tuesday, the European Commission announced that 22 affiliate nations, including the UK, had active an acceding to actualize the EU Blockchain Partnership, an action for countries to allotment blockchain analysis and abet on applications.
Since the alpha of the year, the EU has become more absorbed in blockchain technology. Back in February, it appear the barrage of a Blockchain Observatory and Forum (EUBOF) with a €300m armamentarium to abutment blockchain initiatives.
Not alone does Wednesday’s advertisement highlight that EU authorities accept recognised one accurate use-case for blockchain technology, in a lot of ways, the Blockathon antagonism is the aboriginal of its kind.
Unlike the Venezuelan petro or China’s proposed centralised agenda currency that are about ‘top-down’ approaches to implementing blockchain, the EU is enabling aptitude to appear up with their own strategies that can again be implemented.
This Brussels adaptation of crowdsourcing ability prove actual adorable in the blockchain world. Fears over adverse adjustment casting diffuse caliginosity for abounding developers but by soliciting their advice to finer action crime, the EU can allure aptitude and business in a cast new area which some appraisal to be account $3.1trn by 2030.
The ‘Crypto Valley’, in and about the Swiss accommodate of Zug, is already a world-recognised centre for cryptocurrency and blockchain developers: if added countries appetite in on the action, a ‘blockathon’ ability be a acceptable abode to start.
