When discussing whether something that doesn’t exist in the real world can have real monetary worth, it is important to remember that intangible things have been able to carry value for centuries; the key is ownership and the benefits associated with that ownership. 

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How the Ownership of Ideas Created the Modern World

One of the most important building blocks of modern industry and innovation-based economies was laid down more than three centuries ago in Great Britain with the long form title of "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of Such Copies, During the Times Therein Mentioned." 

 

Also known as the Statute of Anne and the Copyright Act of 1709 (or 1710), this piece of legislation provided the basis for modern copyright and intellectual property laws by establishing that the author of a particular work – not its publisher – was its rightful owner. 

 

The statute marked a pivotal moment in history by distinguishing between creators and distributors in much the same way that today we distinguish between creators (artists, writers, musicians, etc.) and the platforms that distribute their works (Netflix, Medium, Spotify, etc.).

 

By granting creators exclusive rights to their works for a limited time, the Statute of Anne and subsequent acts established an economic framework for intellectual property under which creators could retain control and financial benefits over their works, while society gained access to those works through public libraries, book sales, and similar means of distribution. 

 

The result was a veritable explosion of literature, science, and philosophy that fueled the European Age of Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution.

 

This period in history saw the rise of literary giants such as Jane Austen, Victor Hugo, and Charles Dickens, and intellectual titans including Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Hume, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Adam Smith. In the sciences, the publicly available work of visionaries like Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, and Marie Curie allowed us to radically advance our understanding of the physical world. 

 

The ability to own their ideas brought fame and financial independence to innovators, enabling them to challenge norms, push boundaries, and distribute groundbreaking ideas. Copyright provided an economic incentive to create and share idea-based works, ensuring that contributions would endure and inspire future generations. 

 

Copyright was so powerful and impactful that other nations followed with their own measures, including the United States with its Copyright Act of 1790.

 

For more than three centuries, copyright and other forms of intellectual property protection have been accelerating innovation and powering economies. One of the most notable examples of this effect is China.

China was a free haven for IP infringement. Pirated goods both digital and physical were prevalent until the 1990s and early 2000s, when China began to strengthen its protection of IP. This contributed to a meteoric rise in domestic Chinese innovation, and today China is the world’s leading generator of ideas in the form of scientific studies, patents, technology, content, etc.

China’s reforms to IP protection in the 1990s and early 2000s contributed to an explosion in the number of annual patent applications, considered a proxy indicator of innovation (image from Our World in Data)

 

Owning the Work of our Minds

Today it is widely acknowledged that intellectual property is subject to ownership just like material things, even though intellectual property is intangible and time-bound. We recognize that copyright, trademarks, patents, and similar measures establish and protect ownership of the intangible.

 

In a previous essay I mentioned the work of the philosopher John Locke, describing the man as “one of the OGs in the field of ownership and a major inspiration for both the European Enlightenment and the US Constitution.”

 

Loosely stated, Locke reasoned that a person has a natural right to own the labour of his or her “body” and “hands”. Copyright applied this Lockean view to the intangible products of the mind. 

 

As I noted in that essay, Locke’s reasoning–that a person’s labour generates property–provided a strong basis for “ownership of intangibles including intellectual property, usage time, data, and the derivatives of data.” 

 

Intellectual property is fundamentally intangible: scientific breakthroughs, literary works, musical compositions, and various other creations of the mind emerge “from thin air” and without fixed physical form. 

 

In capitalist economies, the protection of intellectual property plays a crucial role in supporting and incentivizing creators, making it possible for the work of our minds to enjoy commercial success, distribution, and longevity. Without IP protection, entire industries (including technology, science, and medicine) would be severely stunted by the lack of economic incentives to undertake research and development. 

 

It is no exaggeration to say that the Statute of Anne changed the world by launching a framework for creators to own and protect the work of their minds, which in turn made it possible to enhance and sustain innovation.

 

The introduction of intellectual property protection laid the foundation for ownership over the intangible and enabled our minds to create intangible capital assets, thus fuelling the economic engines of wealth generation. Just as importantly, copyright granted rights explicitly to creators, helping to decentralize the concentration of power away from big publishers.

 

Ownership of the intangible represents such obvious and immense value to us at Animoca Brands that we made the advancement of digital property rights our core mission. 

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The Economic Power of Assets without Physical Existence

In traditional business and finance it is well established that the intangible can have worth. Brand equity, intellectual property, and goodwill are all considered valuable. The reams of intangible data that you produce every day through your online activities are highly prized by companies and platforms that use it (and sometimes abuse it) to extract value from you.

 

Consider that intangibles already dominate the global economy:

 

• The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) estimated that in 2019 IP-intensive industries contributed 41% of U.S. domestic economic activity, supporting 63 million jobs (44% of total U.S. employment).

• The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) estimated that in 2023 intangible assets were valued at US$62 trillion – multiples more than the total market cap of gold (approximately US$17-25 trillion).

 

(On a related topic, the sheer economic power of IP makes recent suggestions by Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk that we should “delete all IP law” all the more bizarre. The removal of something that has successfully driven innovation, investment, and development for more than three hundred years hardly seems like the wisest course of action. I discussed this matter in a thread on X.)

 

Blockchain technology is a game-changer because it can provide provable ownership, scarcity, and economic opportunities for intangible assets in a decentralized manner at minimum cost, quickly, and securely.

 

In a non-blockchain framework, a public record of ownership for an asset is maintained by a trusted central authority, often a government agency. This presents some significant challenges, including security, barriers to access, poor efficiency, high costs to owners, red tape, and the poor cost-effectiveness of protecting individual items of relatively little worth.

 

In blockchain-enabled frameworks, however, decentralized and immutable ledgers can greatly reduce waste, vulnerability, and opportunity loss while providing and automating important record-keeping functions more efficiently and securely than centralized systems. But that’s not all.

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The Work of Artificial Minds

IP-based value creation is particularly critical in the context of the artificial intelligence revolution currently underway. 

 

The topic IP protection recently gained attention through a viral trend of images AI-generated in the style of Hayo Miyazaki, the legendary founder of Studio Ghibli. This trend brought to the forefront some concerns about AIs that are trained using protected IP and the potential impact that easily generated imitations have on rightful IP owners.

 

The film industry has been wrangling with this issue for years:

 

“OpenAI, a major U.S. artificial intelligence company, and Google both wrote to the Office of Science and Technology Policy about an AI action plan this month, making the case that it would be beneficial for AI developers to be able to use copyrighted materials to train AI.…

 

“SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents about 160,000 performers, wanted film and TV producers to obtain consent from actors to create and use their digital replicas. They also fought for actors to be compensated at their usual rate – even if the role is performed by a digital replica of them.”

CBS News, 17 March 2025

 

These are thorny issues that will impact most industries, sooner or later. Can a society successfully legislate to protect the work of our minds from the highly efficient imitative assaults of artificial intelligences? Will AI regulation enhance industries or merely restrict innovation and competitiveness? 

 

There is a technological solution to some of the concerns around AI and copyright. Blockchain provides a secure and trustable type of framework for large-scale tracking, provenance, ownership, and various other aspects of intellectual property that are currently being challenged by generative AIs. 

 

Even better, blockchain can also facilitate usage tracking and royalty payments related to ownership of individual assets – even for assets of very low value. 

 

In the AI-driven world of the near future, blockchain technology can be the basis for efficient mechanisms that provide fair rewards and accreditation to creators whose intellectual property fuels AI (a subject I addressed briefly in my TED Talk).