Proof of IP Curation

Problem

The permissionless IP registration paradigm has arrived with Story. This greatly facilitates IP adoption and monetization, but a key problem arises: Anyone can register an IP and say they own a cool idea or creation on Story. A successfully registered IP Asset onto Story does not automatically guarantee its legitimacy. In fact, if it turns out the IP is actually infringing upon existing IPs, the IP can be disputed and consequently invalidated. To make it worse, anyone who has built derivatives on top of that IP will have their registered child IP invalidated as well. This scenario makes creators worried because they can’t always trust the IP building block they want to use. Therefore, in this open IP world, creators need some kind of signal to identify the legitimate and right IP building blocks to work with.

Unhappy Example

Consider the following flow:

1. A user registers a root IP Asset successfully onto Story.

2. Another creator see this IP Asset and think it’s really cool. This creator comes up with a great remixing idea and then registers a child derivative on the original root IP Asset by User A.

3. However, the root IP Asset later gets disputed and it turns out, the root IP Asset is infringing upon another IP. Dispute is successful and it becomes invalidated.

4. The creator User B, who registered a child IP Asset, had nothing to do with the parent IP, but gets punished as their child IP also becomes invalidated. The creator loses both money and time, and is now deterred from using other IPs on Story in their future work.

Hence, we desperately need a way to provide creators with the right IP Assets to work with.