How to protect the ownership of the ICO Whitepaper?

Question

I have an idea which I need to write a white paper and go for an ICO. I am curious to know what happens after I publish the whitepaper that someone else can also steal the same and come up with the platform. How do we prevent this ?

Answer 1

Creative works fixed in some tangible form are eligible for copyright protection, and white papers are considered creative works. Hence, people who are real owners of the whitepaper can apply for copyright protection.

There had been multiple incidents where companies stole the whitepaper already published by one team and just launched another whitepaper with a different project name with the same content. An example is of the blockcat. https://medium.com/blockcat/the-stolen-white-paper-caper-1f7c52ef2e22

With regards to Bitcoin, there were different people who claimed ownership of the bitcoin white paper claiming to be the Satoshi Nakomoto who applied for copyright registration. You can read more about it here : https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/dueling-bitcoin-white-paper-copyright-74199/

So the answer is you have to apply for copyright registration.