Story Protocol: A New Paradigm for Reshaping Intellectual Property Management

With the advancement of time, the economic value of intellectual property (IP) has increasingly become prominent, turning into an important asset class that encompasses a wide range of fields from software code, artistic works to technological inventions.

The global IP market is massive and growing rapidly. In 2020, the global IP market was valued at approximately $180 billion, and it is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 8.5% from 2024 to 2028. In 2020, the number of global patent applications exceeded 3.27 million, an increase of 1.6% year-on-year; the number of trademark applications reached 17.1 million, an increase of 13.7%. Asia is active in IP activities, accounting for 64% of the total global patent applications, with China becoming the largest applicant country.

However, the rapid development of the IP market has also brought many challenges. The traditional IP management model relies on a centralized legal system and manual verification, which is inefficient and difficult to adapt to the demands of the digital age. The main issues include:

1. Insufficient liquidity: Lack of a unified platform, complex and time-consuming IP trading authorization process, and high costs.

2. Lack of protection and transparency: The United States alone loses as much as $50 billion each year due to digital piracy, and traditional legal means struggle to effectively track and stop infringement.

3. The legal system lags behind: existing IP laws are mainly designed for the physical world and do not match the needs of the digital age.

In this context, tokenizing IP and introducing it to the blockchain to achieve programmability and decentralized management may be one of the effective ways to solve these issues.

The Story project has emerged with the aim of fundamentally changing the creation, management, and licensing of IP through blockchain technology. This project is dedicated to building a reconfigurable "story legos" ecosystem, providing a simplified framework to support the full lifecycle management of IP, including source tracing, convenient licensing, and revenue sharing.

Story Network is a general-purpose Layer 1 blockchain specifically designed for efficiently handling complex data structures related to intellectual property (IP). It combines the compatibility of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) with the scalability of the Cosmos SDK, supporting not only complex IP data processing but also interoperability with other blockchains.

One of the core innovations of Story is the Proof-of-Creativity protocol, which provides foundational support for the digitalization and automated management of IP. This protocol enables features such as permissionless licensing and automatic royalty payments, ushering in a new era of decentralized IP management.

The Programmable IP License ( PIL ) is another significant innovation of the Story Network, bringing real-world IP to the blockchain through tokenization and a universal licensing protocol. PIL is similar to the "Y-Combinator SAFE" in the field of IP, providing creators with legal protection and control over their works.

Story Academy, as an ecological incubator, provides comprehensive support for builders and innovators. With its promotion, several projects such as Magma and Mahojin have successfully applied the Story Network protocol, covering areas like design tools and AI training data.

Overall, the Story project has performed well in terms of financing, technology, and implementation, but the IP market is still in its early stages of development, and its long-term success needs time to be validated. With the deepening development of the digital economy, Story is expected to play an important role in reshaping the IP management paradigm.