Computer World published an article this week on the 13th of December which ranked Australia on the sixth position in terms of patents related to the blockchain infrastructure. According to the same report, China is leading the patent race with a total number of 1520 patents having been filled up to now. The United States comes a distant second with a total of 773 patents having been filled in the country.

The data used to write the article cites various sources, top among them being Patent Analytics Hub in Australia and the ACS. It indicates that there has been a significant rise in the number of blockchain patents being filled. Compared to records that were available five years ago (2013), it means that the growth rate currently stands at between 140 and 230% per year.

It goes on to state that although statistics indicate that the most dominant people in that list are from China and the United States, Australia holds a very good sixth position. This is in term of the total sum of copyrights that have been filed by companies and individuals based in Australia.

It does not come as a surprise to note that Australia currently makes up close to fifty percent of all the patents that have been identified to date. With regards to Australia, the report was able to establish that there are forty-nine families which have all been filled by applicants from Australia. The patents have been filled by a total of fifty-five applicants.

Some of the leading patent holders in Australia include companies like Identitii, Bloxian, and Catcha—a FinTech startup that is currently based in the city of Perth. Another leading patent applicant has been CSIRO—an agency owned and operated by the state authorities.

At the start of 2019, Bloxian, which is based in Sydney entered into a partnership agreement with R3 (a software developer). The agreement would see the two companies work on the Corda blockchain-based ecosystem. Money Catcha and Identitii also entered into a separate agreement with HSBC very early on in the year. The purpose of their partnership was to help them boost their compliance efforts on cross-border payment systems.

TBSx3 is another company that was also identified by this report. The company, which is based in Sydney has been using blockchain technology in a bid to boost the real-use cases pertaining to the verification of products.

Yohan Ramasundara, the ACS president, when asked about this report went on to state that it was a good thing to note that Australia was performing quite well in the blockchain space despite the fact that it was facing very strong competition from other countries.

He went on to add that they were thankful to the government departments, the Australian Stock Exchange, and the financial companies in the country for agreeing to finance proof of concept projects. He also noted that the Digital Transformation Agency was increasingly playing an essential role in ensuring that blockchain companies got all the help that they needed.

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