The Trolls Are Coming: Defending Bitcoin Mining From Patent Trolls

Malikie Innovations, a patent troll that acquired patents from BlackBerry, sued Core Scientific and Marathon Digital Holdings in May 2025, claiming that routine Bitcoin operations such as verifying ECC-based signatures infringe patents originally developed by Certicom. Defensive options discussed include prior-art searches, inter partes review at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, declaratory judgment actions, and community-funded support from groups such as the EFF and the Linux Foundation. In the EFF-backed Personal Audio challenge, funded by over a thousand small donations, the Patent Office canceled all claims of a podcasting patent in 2015.