Ethereum Title Service (ENS) has petitioned the united states Patent and Trademark Web page of work (USPTO) to tell the validity of a patent got by Unstoppable Domains (UD) in 2023. ENS claims that UD’s patent utilizes technology that ENS had developed and open-sourced.
In an announcement on social media platform X, ENS defined that UD got a patent for technology that ENS Labs developed with the intent of being open-provide.
ENS Update 🧵: In 2023 Unstoppable Domains (UD) got a patent for technology ENS Labs developed as open-provide. These days, we petitioned USPTO to tell the validity of that patent, and to be definite that the fetch remains a collaborative effect. Right here is why and what’s at stake. pic.twitter.com/Qxls0kkP6G
— ens.eth (@ensdomains) May possibly simply 2, 2024
Each and every ENS and UD present domain title and pockets services and products with top-level domains (TLDs) equivalent to .crypto, .eth, and similarly branded names that make an affinity with the crypto effect. ENS alleges that UD patented “ENS’s pioneering technology, proper now leveraging our open-provide innovations” and that ENS’ contributions had been even cited in the patent.
“We gave UD every opportunity to withhold far off from this battle: UD refused to open provide the patent and refused to earn any irrevocable pledges no longer to make exercise of the patent to the detriment of the community,” ENS said.
In response to the petition, Unstoppable Domains founder Matthew Gould said on X that the patent was once reviewed by the examiner with the citations to ENS in put. Gould argued that patents are valid and that “filing patents is terribly identical outdated in both web3 and the domain exchange.”
On this reward, Cut Johnson, the lead developer of ENS, asked Gould to cite the main innovation in UD’s patent that wasn’t already fraction of ENS.
Presumably you have to well summarize, Matt, for the total of us on Twitter who build no longer absorb time to read the total patent. What’s the main innovation your patent covers that wasn’t already fraction of ENS?
— gash.eth (@nicksdjohnson) May possibly simply 2, 2024
At the time of writing, Gould is yet to answer to Johnson’s seek info from, a lack of response for which the latter posted two cricket emojis.
In his preliminary response to ENS’ thread, Gould argues that Unstoppable Domains has several other patents pending and ought to proceed to file patents to “offer protection to” the corporate. Gould also mentions that his company had made a non-assertion pledge over a one year ago and views the tell as resolved.
In July 2022, Unstoppable Domains raised $65 million in a Sequence A spherical led by Pantera Capital, sending the agency’s valuation to a unicorn effect at $1 billion. ENS, on the opposite hand, operates in accordance with a area of decentralized dapper contracts for an open and public infrastructure.
