There is exciting news in the security tokenization sector. Social Equity, a new company to the sector, has just achieved publication of its patent application for a method and platform to tokenize real estate. This publication comes over a month after our article observing how despite tokenizing real estate being one of the fastest-growing sectors in tokenization, the patent space was all but barren.

Social Equity's patent application 20200211134 is important for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the application is important in its own right. In teaching a full platform for the tokenization and trade of real estate, Social Equity is doing what no other company has yet done for real estate tokenization, opening a door for new opportunities, and bringing some much-needed development to the real estate space. Moreover, application 20200211134 signals there may be an interest in following the overall sector trend of developing tokenization platforms instead of just developing better ways to record the transfer of title and verify ownership as the first applications within the space have taught. This new angle for patentability could promote more interest in the space going forward. Finally, we are seeing signs of patent activity to match the success tokenizing real estate is having on the market.

A second key reason application 20200211134 is so big stems from the fact that it does follow the overall sector trend. The hotbed for development within the sector is financial platform development, and the physical asset space has seen its most attention in platform development as well. These platforms, while usually having some focus, tend to describe their scope in as broad of terms as possible to be catch-alls for any type of tokenization. Social Equity is attempting to build a platform for real estate tokenization signals a belief that they can build such a platform. In different terms, Social Equity is betting that existing platforms either cannot do what they do or as described in their disclosures do not conflict with what Social Equity's platform does. While only time will tell whether this gamble will pay off, it means there may be a real opportunity for not just the real estate space but any space within the sector. It may be possible to develop platforms tailored to a specific space, like Social Equity and real estate, blowing open the door for patent opportunities within the sector. Again, only time will tell, but it makes Social Equity's application one to watch in the coming years.

Finally, application 20200211134 is the crowning jewel to cap off a month of explosive development for the real estate space, at least by its own standards. 

The past month has seen the addition of four new applications to the real estate space, a 200% increase since June. While granted that the real estate space only had two publications before, on the whole publications for tokenizing physical assets did not begin rolling out until 2019. With the exception of the non-practicing entity Strong Force blitzing the energy space, development within the physical assets space has been incredibly slow since 2019, making the past month not just an explosive development for the real estate space, but the physical asset space as a whole.

Be sure to analyze the application at Patent Matrix® and the Patent Radian® to see the whole sector.