Companies Adopt Blockchain to Enhance Security in Asia

April 1, 2017

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From digital currencies, healthcare, diamonds, land ownership, education, voting, finance, and insurance, the growth of the blockchain has expanded.

Two such companies using it are Shanghai-based Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) BitSE, which provides anti-counterfeiting security features through its VeChain agnostic blockchain platform that puts unique IDs on the blockchain and Vietnam-based Copyrobo, which is a technology company that helps individuals to secure their copyright through bitcoin’s blockchain and qualified timestamps.

BitSE: Securing Products Against Counterfeiters

Founded by former employees of IBM, Louis Vuitton, and Alibaba, Bit Service Experts (BitSE), is a Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) model that does what its name suggests: it offers blockchain services to its customers to make innovations in industries.

One of the projects that BitSE is working on is their VeChain project, which started at the beginning of 2016, combining blockchain and near field communication (NFC), which provides an anti-counterfeiting solution to one of the biggest problems that individuals face.

As a cloud product management solution VeChain integrates the blockchain technology to put unique IDs on the blockchain relating to each product that has been registered. Customers can then verify whether an item is genuine or not, knowing that the data inserted will remain and is trustworthy.

Speaking to CCN, Sunny Lu, BitSE COO, said manufacturers and consumers suffer from counterfeited products.

Manufacturers suffer an economic loss and brand damage from counterfeiting. Consumers, on the other hand, could experience a different quality of product which could lead to some risks to using it, for example, fake medicine or food could lead to health issues for consumers and fake tools could result in injury.

When the project started last year, they focused on how the blockchain could help luxury brand executives by organizing workshops to discuss and exchange ideas. VeChain also teamed up with fashion label Babyghost at Shanghai’s Fashion Week in 2016, which saw the fashion label delve into the digital world. Each piece of Babyghost clothing was embedded with a VeChain chip. Those at the event scanned the QR code on the label where they would verify the piece on the blockchain and receive an interactive memory of who originally wore the piece in NYC.

Since VeChain started it has evolved with more use cases including asset management, supply chain management, and client interactions.

With multiple sectors turning to VeChain it has attracted industries such as healthcare, music, animal husbandry, automobile, and general logistics.

Lu added:

It brings fresh ideas on how to manage items in multiple different scenarios, but mostly focuses on the core values which are brought up by blockchain technology such as irrevocability, unique IDs, traceability, and a common trust platform.

Copyrobo: Protecting What’s Rightfully Yours

Last October, Copyrobo announced that it was providing a comprehensive copyright solution using bitcoin’s blockchain and qualified timestamps, making it easier and faster (less than 60 seconds) for individuals to prove and manage their copyright.

Speaking to CCN, Hasan Kurtulus, founder of Copyrobo, said that copyright infringement on the Internet is rampant and that sharing creative work has always been a risky proposition.

He states:

Our motto is: sharing work safely in a sharing economy. With the advent of virtual reality, 3D printing designs, robotics, data visualization, and the gig economy, we believe more people will migrate to creative collaborative fields.

As such, they will all require a method of assigning ownership rights after creation and protecting those rights once they share their work with others, either publicly or privately.

Kurtulus says:

Copyrobo provides the tools needed to protect and share work quickly and efficiently as part of normal work process flows without the need for legal department intervention.

Copyrobo does this using qualified and blockchain timestamping. Timestamping is a common technique used to track the time and date of filing, and the authenticity of a document, video or image; however, modern electronic timestamping provides the same assurances with greater security and convenience for the owner, which is where qualified electronic and blockchain timestamps come into play.

Complying with the European Union’s eIDAS regulations, the qualified timestamp provides stronger protection, greater deterrence, and a better chance of winning court judgements against infringers. According to Kurtulus, European courts are required to accept the soundness of four features of qualified timestamps: date, time, content, and the certificate of the timestamping authority. Yet, while it’s embraced in Europe, it has yet to be in the U.S. and other countries.

However, while blockchain timestamping is new and is not yet recognized specifically by eIDAS, Kurtulus states that any electronic timestamp recognized by one European country must be recognized by all. Rather than relying on a trusted third-party agent for timestamping, blockchain timestamps use a decentralized tamper-proof virtual ledger on a distributed peer-to-peer network to record and verify timestamps.

How to Verify Work

Each time a person uses Copyrobo to timestamp a file, a CopyrightKey is generated that is unique to that one file comprising of symbols, numbers and letters, such as @Copyrobo-1234ABCD. By using this key a person can deter the theft of their property by linking to the CopyrightKey, providing all the information needed to claim ownership.

At present Google has removed around 2.24 billion URLs with over one million websites affected based on copyright violation requests, and that number will only grow. With Copyrobo, though, they can rest assured their work is safe.

Kurtulus concludes: