Absent resource tradeoff, widespread adoption of blockchain is implausible due to the lack of regulations and certainty.

The main challenge facing the widespread adoption of blockchains for the enforcement of IP rights is the difficulty of explaining and understanding the complexities of the underlying technology. Today, in most countries, even the challenges and intricacies of online counterfeiting have not yet been adequately examined or comprehended by the enforcement authorities. In light of this fact, it is not difficult to guess that getting enforcement authorities to use a cutting-edge technology such as blockchain to protect IP rights will require a vast amount of persuasion and training. The application(s) must be constructed in a way that is relatively simple and easy to use. This is a crucial attribute that such applications must have, considering the wide range of possible users and their varying levels of technological adeptness. Not everybody has the will, talent or desire to learn how to code in order to create a smart contract. Therefore, applications with simple and easy-to-use interfaces will be essential in this field.

Another significant challenge could arise out of the nature of blockchain technology. The critics of the use of this technology in the field of intellectual property are mostly on the same page regarding this issue.65 These critics agree that the size of the data created would be enormous if this vision was realized and copyright management was carried out by using blockchain technology. Since the users of the system are also the nodes of the system in a blockchain, each one of them would need to store quite massive amounts of data. The solution to this problem may lie in the rapid development and improvement of the existing blockchain technology. In this context, looking at past technological developments could provide us with a sense of hope, once we realize how the meaning of “massive amounts of data” has changed in recent years. A USB flash drive with 64 MB storage capacity was first introduced in 2003, merely 15 years ago.66 Today, Kingston offers USB flash drives that can store up to two TB of data, which corresponds to a storage capacity that is more than 30,000 times bigger than the capacity offered by the most advanced USB flash drives just 15 years ago. Considering this exponential growth in storage capacity in the past 15 years, it would not be unreasonable to predict that the question of “storage space” for global music data will one day become obsolete. Nevertheless, at least for the time being, it is up to the software developers to address and resolve this issue.

From a legal perspective, the most difficult challenge to the adoption of blockchain technology for IP practice and enforcement appears to be the regulation of this technology. Since blockchain technology has been adopted quite rapidly and promises to bring about many changes, there are certain areas in which it must be regulated before it is too late. However, effectively regulating the technology in its early years is a significant challenge because the future of blockchain remains unknown. Therefore, apart from the social and technical challenges blockchain will face, the legal challenges will also provide a considerable obstacle to its development and widespread adoption.