To my understanding it is purely software thing. It cannot be detected from
outside if miner uses this improvement or not. So patenting it is worthless.

slush

On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 1:01 AM, Mustafa Al-Bassam via bitcoin-dev <
bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

> Alternatively scenario: it will cause a sudden increase of Bitcoin mines
> in countries where the algorithm is not patented, possibly causing a
> geographical decentralization of miners from countries that already have a
> lot of miners like China (if it is patented in China).
>
> On 01/04/16 10:00, Peter Todd via bitcoin-dev wrote:
>
> On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 09:41:40PM -0700, Timo Hanke via bitcoin-dev wrote:
>
> Hi.
>
> I'd like to announce a white paper that describes a very new and
> significant algorithmic improvement to the Bitcoin mining process which has
> never been discussed in public before. The white paper can be found here:
> http://www.math.rwth-aachen.de/~Timo.Hanke/AsicBoostWhitepaperrev5.pdf
>
> What steps are you going to take to make sure that this improvement is
> available to all ASIC designers/mfgs on a equal opportunity basis?
>
> The fact that you've chosen to patent this improvement could be a
> centralization concern depending on the licensing model used. For example, one
> could imagine a licensing model that gave one manufacture exclusive rights.
>
>
>
>
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