Participants: Teams of 4-8 people, over 18 years of ages

Countries: All over the world!

You must apply as a team with a minimum of four members and a maximum of eight. Appoint a ‘team captain’ who will represent the team and be the point of contact. All team members are jointly responsible and must all fulfil and respect the conditions set out in these Rules of Contest.

The captain will have to confirm that they have the power of representation of the other team members for the purposes of this competition by signing the relevant declaration in the application form.

The application must be made using the online form, which is only available in English. The application must be readable, accessible, printable and complete. The application form will be considered inadmissible if mandatory elements are missing. Mandatory elements are set out in the form (CV, Identity proof).

Selected teams will be asked at a later stage for further documents (legal entity and bank account details, as well as evidence of compliance with the exclusion criteria).

After submission of the application you will receive a confirmation email and a participation number, necessary for your application to be successfully registered; this number should be referred to for future correspondence.

EXCLUSION CRITERIA

Your team will be excluded if the team or any of the members are in one of the situations defined in Article 106/107 Financial Regulation, including as an example:

●bankrupt, subject to insolvency or winding-up procedures, where their assets are being administered by a liquidator or by a court, where they are in an arrangement with creditors, where their business activities are suspended, or
where they are in any analogous situation arising from a similar procedure provided for under national laws or regulations (including persons with unlimited liability for the participant’s debts).

●declared in breach (including persons with unlimited liability for the participant’s debts) of their obligations relating to the payment of taxes or social security contributions in accordance with the law of the country in which they are established, with those of the country in which the contracting authority is located or those of the country of the performance of the competition.

●found guilty of grave professional misconduct by a final judgment or decision (including persons having powers of representation, decision-making or control).

●sentenced by a final judgment of fraud, hacking, corruption or any other criminal offence.

●shown significant deficiencies in complying with main obligations under a procurement contract, grant agreement or grant decision financed by the EU or Euratom budget, (including persons having powers of representation, decisionmaking or control) which has led to its early termination or to the application of liquidated damages or other contractual penalties or which has been discovered following checks, audits or investigations by an authorising
officer, OLAF or the Court of Auditors.

● found guilty of irregularities within the meaning of Article 1(2) of Regulation No 2988/95 (including persons having powers of representation, decision-making or control).

●have misrepresented information required for participating in the contest or fail to submit such information.

●have participated in the preparation of the prize documents for this competition and this entails a distortion of competition.

A declaration confirming that you have read Article 106/107 and are not in one of the exclusion situations is included in the application form. In order for the application to be valid you will have to accept it.

TEAM SELECTION
A two-step process will be followed to select teams. The first step will check eligibility. Compliance with the eligibility criteria is an essential condition for being admitted to the second step of the selection phase, where the capacity of teams will be assessed on the basis of the selection criteria.

The selection criteria will be used to score points for each team. The teams with the top ten scores will be invited to the Blockathon. In the event that it is not possible to limit the selection to ten teams due to equal scores then the additional teams will be admitted to the competition.

The team captain will receive an email confirming whether or not they have been successful. The names of all successful teams will be published on the “www.blockathon .eu”.

Using blockchain to co-create the future EU anti-counterfeiting infrastructure

The EUIPO Blockathon 2018 Prize will be awarded to the solution demonstrating the greatest potential to address the interconnected nature of the three challenges, the impact on counterfeiting, the impact for the users and vision of the future.

Nowadays, people live within worldwide virtual communities, just a click away from producing, sharing, buying and enjoying an ever-increasing diversity of products. The online world relies on trust that:

• you’ll get what you bought;
• your personal data won’t be misused and diverted;
• you know who’s behind what you purchase; and
• you’ll receive the original product you ordered and paid for.

Consumers are more and more confused about whether a product is authentic or not. In 2017, 10 % of EU consumers (approximately 43 million citizens) were tricked into buying a fake product instead of a genuine one. This figure represents the size of the combined populations of Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Ireland and Portugal. Over three times more people, 35 % (approximately 150 million in total!), wondered whether the product they had purchased online was real or fake .

It is apparent that free riders, criminal organisations and others involved in illegal activities use the potential of the virtual world for their personal gain, with no consideration for environmental, health and social standards, not to mention the safety and health of consumers. This illegal EUR 338 billion worldwide business is growing.

We all face the risks of fakes and this is a concern for everybody, so we all have a stake in the game.

At a global level, the European Union is involved in diplomatic and economic efforts to fight against fake goods. The protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) is a cornerstone in this effort that helps to sustain creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. Once an IPR has been registered, the product and its related brand are protected by the system, and the owner is then considered an ‘IP rights holder’. This legal protection is then used by businesses, customs authorities, law enforcement, judiciary, courts of law and various other enforcement authorities that are active, within the legal and procedural constraints, in the fight against counterfeiting. Within this coalition, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) is a key player; as a European Union agency with a global focus, it is connected with its counterparts across the globe in the fight.

However, even with this strong coalition, it is simply impossible to track every package and every shipment entering into EU territory at the current time. There are huge challenges, such as the massive amount of goods transported in small parcels, the bureaucracy involved and all the protocols and processes to be followed in different countries.

Furthermore, there are many tools, solutions and ways to fight counterfeiting but they work separately, are centralised, with little synchronisation and there is no way to connect all the relevant players: the EU, intellectual property offices, governments, customs and other enforcement authorities, manufacturers, retailers, shipping companies, ports and airports and, above all, us — the citizens.

In a nutshell, we need more synchronisation and decentralisation.

We need greater interconnectivity and the trust of all the actors involved in this process. Could blockchain live up to the challenge and help to build the next generation of an anti-counterfeiting infrastructure? Could blockchain be the basis of a common platform for everyone involved to interact and work together?

We need ways to be able to communicate what is true (authentic) and what has actually occurred throughout the entire supply chain: from the manufacturer through to the consumer. A secure, collectively shared truth. By doing so, everyone involved can help fight counterfeiting in a smarter and more effective way.

This is what the EUIPO, in collaboration with many other partners and organisations from both the public and the private sectors, is daring to explore. The aim is to link existing tracking solutions available in the market, as well as public databases of intellectual property, through a blockchain solution. The idea is to develop an infrastructure where anybody interested (producers, consumers, transport services, etc.) would be able to check the authenticity of any product openly and easily, as well as the possibility to alert rights holders to fakes. Perhaps one day you will be able to do all of this by just swiping your smartphone … dreaming is allowed.

Source code that is produced in this competition will be subject to open source license, specifically protected under the European Union Public License (EUPL).

Teams are requested to read it carefully before submitting an application. You are free to commercially exploit your applications and services based on the solutions developed during the competition