Protect Your Prompts: Protocols for IP Protection in LLM Applications
M. A. van Wyk M. Bekker X. L. Richards K. J. Nixon
With the rapid adoption of AI in the form of large language models (LLMs),
the potential value of carefully engineered prompts has become significant.
However, to realize this potential, prompts should be tradable on an open
market. Since prompts are, at present, generally economically non-excludable,
by virtue of their nature as text, no general competitive market has yet been
established. This note discusses two protocols intended to provide protection
of prompts, elevating their status as intellectual property, thus confirming
the intellectual property rights of prompt engineers, and potentially
supporting the flourishing of an open market for LLM prompts.