Success Case: Competence Certification

Own Your Business and Ithum collaborated to innovate the certification process for training courses, utilising blockchain technology to notarise participants’ certificates. This initiative involved two high-profile training courses: “Auditor/Lead Auditor ISO/IEC 42001 Artificial Intelligence” and “Auditor/Lead Auditor ISO 22301”. The notarisation of certificates on the blockchain brought numerous benefits in terms of security, transparency, and global recognition of the skills acquired by the trainees.

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Competence Certification with Blockchain Technology

Blockchain technology is revolutionising how skills and certificates are managed in education and training. The adoption of blockchain can bring numerous benefits, creating an ecosystem based on transparency, authenticity, and security in the certification and skills validation processes. This ecosystem involves various stakeholders interested in ensuring the authenticity of the data managed, creating a mechanism where data holders are incentivised to be part of this system, gaining a competitive advantage over those not involved.

Characteristics and Benefits

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Transparency and Authenticity

Using blockchain to record skills and certificates brings unprecedented transparency to these processes. Every transaction is permanently and immutably recorded, ensuring that data cannot be altered or forged. This guarantees the authenticity of credentials and protects students, employers, and educational institutions from fraud and manipulation.

Simplification of Validation Processes

Blockchain notarisation of skills and certificates greatly simplifies validation and verification processes. Information is quickly and transparently accessible, allowing users to directly and reliably verify the validity of credentials. This eliminates the time and costs associated with manual document validation, improving the overall efficiency of the education and training system.

Portability and Accessibility

Blockchain makes credentials and certificates highly portable and accessible. Individuals can securely store their skills and certifications and present them quickly and directly to educational institutions and employers. This promotes mobility and flexibility in academic and professional contexts, enabling individuals to showcase their skills more effectively.

Reduction of Fraud Risk

Blockchain protects credentials from fraud and forgery, ensuring the security and integrity of the data. The adoption of blockchain promotes innovation in the education and training sector by encouraging the use of advanced technologies and more efficient processes. The transparency and authenticity guaranteed by blockchain help strengthen stakeholders’ trust in the competence certification system.

Credibility and Visibility

The use of blockchain enhances the credibility and reliability of educational institutions’ certificates, ensuring information transparency and authenticity. By leveraging blockchain, academic institutions can offer a more transparent and accessible skills registration service, increasing their visibility and appeal to students and employers.

Involved Stakeholders

Professionals and Companies

Professionals can notarise and certify their skills, gaining a competitive advantage in their respective business sectors. Companies can access transparent and traceable skills, reducing the risk of fraud and CV forgery.

Universities and Training Institutions

Universities and training institutions can use blockchain technology to issue immutable and unique certificates, reducing the risk of counterfeiting and enhancing their credibility.

Public Administration

Public administrations can verify skills during public tender procedures without needing to request confirmation from the data holders or those responsible for issuing certificates and credentials.

🧩 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY & BLOCKCHAIN VALUE MATRIX — YLIUM INTEGRATION

Regulation / Framework	Scope & Legal Reference	Blockchain Role (Ylium Function)	Ylium Benefit for IP Protection	Business Impact
WIPO – World Intellectual Property Organization	International protection of IP rights under Berne & Paris Conventions	Ylium notarizes works, designs, and patents with immutable timestamps	Provides verifiable proof of creation and ownership	Strengthens legal evidence in disputes and IP filings
EUIPO – European Union Intellectual Property Office	Manages trademarks, designs, and copyrights in the EU	Ylium integrates a blockchain certificate of originality linked to each digital work	Simplifies proof of ownership for EU IP registration	Reduces registration time and cost for innovators
Berne Convention (1886) & TRIPS Agreement (1994)	Protects literary, artistic, and scientific works internationally	Blockchain acts as a global register of creative ownership	Ensures international recognition of creation date	Facilitates cross-border copyright enforcement
Digital Copyright Directive (EU 2019/790)	EU directive for online content protection and fair remuneration	Ylium NFT system certifies authorship and licensing rights	Enables transparent royalty tracking and smart licensing	Creates new digital rights management (DRM) models
Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT)	Harmonized patent application system	Ylium notarization certifies prior art and R&D documentation	Establishes verifiable innovation traceability	Simplifies proof of “first to file” and prevents IP conflicts
ISO 56005:2020 – Innovation Management	Guidelines for IP management within innovation processes	Ylium Core logs R&D steps and design iterations immutably	Supports IP audits, ISO certification, and innovation governance	Reduces risk of internal IP loss or misappropriation
GDPR & Data Act (EU)	Data ownership and transparency in digital assets	Ylium SSI / ID manages ownership and access rights to digital creations	Ensures privacy and control over intellectual property metadata	Secure distribution of IP with traceable access permissions
UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records (MLETR)	Recognition of digital transferable documents	Ylium NFT allows tokenization of digital assets as transferable IP certificates	Turns IP rights into tradable digital assets	Enables new business models: tokenized art, patents, licenses
AI Act (EU 2024)	Regulation of AI-generated content and accountability	Blockchain ensures traceability of AI-generated works	Certifies human authorship vs. algorithmic creation	Protects creators and companies using generative AI tools
ESG / SDG 9 – Innovation & Infrastructure	Encourages fair, transparent, and sustainable innovation	Polygon-based Ylium ensures green and ethical certification	Demonstrates responsible and sustainable IP management	Boosts brand reputation and access to innovation funding