Article: Self-identification of legal conflicts in intellectual property contracts based on zero-knowledge proofs Journal: International Journal of Information and Communication Technology (IJICT) 2025 Vol.26 No.45 pp.66 - 82 Abstract: The rapid expansion of the digital economy heightens the need for privacy and trust in intellectual property transactions. Traditional centralised approaches to identifying legal conflicts in intellectual property contracts are prone to data leakage and fail to balance transparency with confidentiality. This paper proposes a self-identification method for legal conflicts in intellectual property contracts using zero-knowledge proofs. By combining a light gradient boosting machine learning model with the zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge protocol, our approach allows verifiable detection of potential legal conflicts without revealing sensitive information. Experiments on the US patent and trademark office patent dataset demonstrate that the method achieves high performance in conflict prediction (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve = 0.872) and verification efficiency (<10 ms), providing a novel and practical framework for privacy-aware legal technology. Inderscience Publishers - linking academia, business and industry through research

Title: Self-identification of legal conflicts in intellectual property contracts based on zero-knowledge proofs

Authors: Jing Xu

Addresses: School of Humanities and Law, Hefei University of Economics, Hefei 230012, China

Abstract: The rapid expansion of the digital economy heightens the need for privacy and trust in intellectual property transactions. Traditional centralised approaches to identifying legal conflicts in intellectual property contracts are prone to data leakage and fail to balance transparency with confidentiality. This paper proposes a self-identification method for legal conflicts in intellectual property contracts using zero-knowledge proofs. By combining a light gradient boosting machine learning model with the zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge protocol, our approach allows verifiable detection of potential legal conflicts without revealing sensitive information. Experiments on the US patent and trademark office patent dataset demonstrate that the method achieves high performance in conflict prediction (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve = 0.872) and verification efficiency (<10 ms), providing a novel and practical framework for privacy-aware legal technology.

Keywords: zero-knowledge proof; ZKP; intellectual property contract; automatic identification of legal conflicts; privacy protection; machine learning.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICT.2025.150411

International Journal of Information and Communication Technology, 2025 Vol.26 No.45, pp.66 - 82

Received: 29 Aug 2025
Accepted: 28 Sep 2025
Published online: 12 Dec 2025 *

Title: Self-identification of legal conflicts in intellectual property contracts based on zero-knowledge proofs

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