Sony Reveals Rights Management System Built on Blockchain

Multinational technology company Sony (NYSE:SNE; TYO:6758) announced on Monday (October 15) that it is now officially developing a digital content rights management system built on blockchain.

In the company’s press release, Sony said that the platform is focused on “managing rights-related information of written works.”

Features of the unnamed project include showing data and and the time electric data was generated and identifying work that was previously recorded. The press release says these features will make it possible for those to share and identify who created the electric piece of data and when it was generated.

Sony said that these new system features come backed by Sony’s and Sony Global Education’s existing one for authenticating, sharing and rights management of educational data.

” [A]dvances in technologies for digital content creation allow anyone to broadcast and share content, but the rights management of that content is still carried out conventionally by industry organizations or the creators themselves, necessitating a more efficient way of managing and demonstrating ownership of copyright-related information for written works,” Sony said in its press release.

Sony added that the rights management of digital content will range from electronic textbooks, music, movies, virtual reality (VR) content, and e-books.

Over the last year, Sony has filed a number of blockchain patents. Case in point, one of the patents, which is for digital rights data using blockchain, was initially published by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) back in April. The patent claimed that current digital rights management systems “may not be very reliable and rely on one unique point of failure.”

By August, the USPTO made public two patents filed by the company, both of which aim to create a device for accessing or maintaining a distributed ledger.

Last year, it it was revealed that Sony and tech mammoth IBM (NYSE:IBM) were partnering on a blockchain patent for an educational platform. Sony filed the patent in August 2017.

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Securities Disclosure: I, Jocelyn Aspa, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.