Protect Your Prompts: Protocols for IP Protection in LLM Applications

TL;DR

This paper discusses protocols designed to protect prompts in large language models, aiming to establish a market for prompt IP rights and incentivize prompt engineering.

Contribution

It introduces two protocols to elevate prompts as intellectual property, enabling a tradable market and protecting prompt creators' rights.

Findings

Protocols can potentially establish a prompt market

Enhances IP rights for prompt engineers

Supports open market development for LLM prompts

Abstract

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.