Law360, New York ( March 10, 2017, 1:02 PM EST) -- Prior to filing a patent application, it can be very useful to conduct a search of existing filed patents and patent applications that may be related to the technology under consideration. This search often lets clients better determine whether it is worth the time and money to follow through on filing a patent application. For example, someone may have already filed a patent application directed to the client's idea, or the particular technology space may be very crowded with a lot of related filings. Often with a new technology, few filings exist and clients rightly move to establish priority before a technology space becomes crowded. Today, few technologies have more hype surrounding them than blockchain technology. Blockchain technology is promised to solve problems related to finance, insurance, identity, supply chain management, logistics and other businesses. This article discusses the results of a high-level search for blockchain-related patent filings, and shows that the number of people and companies filing for patents on blockchain-related technology has been steadily increasing each year....