> Today we are excited to announce some important steps we are taking on the patent front, why these defensive steps are necessary, and our hope that others will see merit in our approach and follow our lead.
...
> Our Patent Pledge assures developers and users of our technology that we will not sue them for patent infringement, provided they comply with the terms and conditions of our pledge...
https://blockstream.com/2016/07/19/blockstream-defensive-pat...
Edit: Here is a discussion of Blockstream's patent application for side car design,
> The application, submitted on 9th May and published earlier this week, outlines “systems and methods...for transferring an asset from a parent chain to a sidechain”.
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-blockstream-patent-sidechain...
Here is blockstream talking about Lightening,
> Blockstream’s work on the Lightning protocol began two years ago with the intention of enabling new applications and developing new use cases that could help further the adoption of Bitcoin and related technologies
https://blockstream.com/2015/09/01/lightning-network.html
Also presumably if segwit activates then Liquid is no longer needed?
Edit: The relationship between Blockstream and Lightning is underscored, by the fact that the largest contributor to the specification is a Blockstream employee (Rustee Russell),
https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lightning-rfc/graphs/con...
Liquid Network and Lightening Network are different things and work in a different ways. A new version of liquid that uses some of he lightening technology enabled by segwit is probably in Blockstreams plans... but there are multiple competing open source implementations of Lightening Network being worked on.
Please link to the patents on the lightening network. I don't think you can.
There is no current network congestion. Free transactions are clearing after awhile and very low fee transactions are clearing right away.
All of the congestion of the past 3 months was from a spam campaign being run by the people who claim "bitcoin doesn't scale without larger blocks" ignoring that Segwit increases block size AND increases efficiency in using that capacity.