Blockchain and NFTs in IP Management

In this paper, the third part of a comprehensive study on blockchain's role in intellectual property management, we interviewed 27 experts to explore blockchain's impact on managing the intellectual property life cycle that is how copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and patents are created, protected, managed, enforced, and monetized. Semi-structured interviews provided insights into the benefits and limitations of blockchain in managing intellectual property. Attributes were clustered using a meta-matrix validated by expert feedback. Participants shared views on barriers to blockchain adoption in intellectual property and predicted its evolution over the next 5–10 years. Our findings highlight advantages such as proof of authenticity and ownership, smart contracts, tokenization (including non-fungible tokens or NFTs), and legal protection. However, challenges like scalability, interoperability, lack of a blockchain-intellectual property ecosystem, and limited use cases must be addressed to foster adoption. We summarized implications and recommendations for future research.