It is being reported that an advisory committee within the U.S. Customs and Border Protection service will soon launch a blockchain-based proof of concept relating to intellectual property rights.

Sometime in late August, the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee — which provides advice to the heads of both the Department of the Treasury and Department of Homeland Security — will begin a month-long test of the system, according to a report recently published on the Customs service's website.

The announcement of the test comes from the committee's Next Generation Facilitation Subcommittee, which is composed of 4 working groups. These groups are tasked with improving both trade and the government within the context of the Customs service.

The proof of concept is just one of 3 blockchain-based projects that the subcommittee is currently involved in. It is called the "Intellectual Property Rights Proof of Concept" and it will track shipments using a blockchain, based on existing relationships between licensors and sub-licensees. The following elements of the project have already been completed:

The overall project design The implementation of the initial engineering plan The integration of Trade and Customs service systems
This is not the first blockchain-based shipping system that the Customs service has tested. Back in 2018, they tested a similar system for tracking shipments. This system combined a legacy application used by the Customs service with a new blockchain-based platform that the Department of Homeland Security had developed.

Vincent Annunziato, who is the director of the Custom service's Transformation and Innovation division, stated at the time that currently available blockchain platforms were not compatible with each other. So, as part of the testing for that system, the Custom service attempted to develop standards for interacting between different forms of blockchain technology, so that different companies using different type of software would be to interact with the Customs service in the future.