Founder and lead developer of Ethereum Identify Service (ENS) Nick Johnson is urging blockchain domains firm Unstoppable Domains to drop a lately awarded patent or face a lawsuit, according to an open letter shared on X (previously Twitter).
In January, Unstoppable Domains was granted its first patent, US11558344, which claims that Braden River Pezeshki, Matthew Everett Gould and Bogdan Gusiev are the inventors of a know-how that makes use of blockchain know-how to find out domains. The patent request was filed with the US Patent and Trademark Workplace in 2021.
In line with Johnson, the patent is “primarily based fully on improvements that ENS developed and accommodates no novel improvements of its personal.” The ENS documentation stipulates that:
“The Ethereum Identify Service (ENS) is a distributed, open, and extensible naming system primarily based on the Ethereum blockchain. ENS’s job is to map human-readable names like ‘alice. eth’ to machine-readable identifiers corresponding to Ethereum addresses, different cryptocurrency addresses, content material hashes, and metadata.”
Within the open letter revealed on Nov. 17, Johnson claims that every one the ENS work is below open-source licenses, with all requirements publicly out there for implementation. In line with him, continued makes an attempt to contact Unstoppable Domains concerning the problem have failed in current months.
“UD has subsequently issued a press launch ‘pledging’ its first patent to the Web3 Area Alliance, an trade group based and run by Unstoppable Domains. We admire the sentiment behind this, however regrettably, press releases usually are not legally binding,” Johnson famous within the thread.
“We’re thus requesting that Unstoppable Domains put authorized weight behind its PR dedication, with an unconditional and irrevocable patent pledge.”
The ENS Labs is “able to problem this patent, which we consider is fully spinoff of our personal innovations; a place we’re in a position and prepared to reveal.,” Johnson warned.
One of many alleged inventors from Unstoppable Domains, Matthew Gould, responded within the thread, extending an open invitation to hitch the Web3 Area Alliance, the blockchain area registry group allegedly pledged with the patent. Gould additionally argued that:
“I feel your proposed answer doesn’t keep in mind the truth that we wish there to be a number of naming programs – not simply ENS – and the one approach to make sure that future is to have a spot the place everybody (not simply UD and ENS) collaborate.”
Cointelegraph reached out to Unstoppable Domains, however didn’t obtain a right away response.
The thread has caught the eye of the crypto group. Bob Summerwill, government director of the Ethereum Basic Cooperative (ETC Cooperative), noted that requiring organizations to hitch the Web3 Area Alliance for rights over the know-how can be a direct assault on the open-source ethos.
“Additionally, Matt, this prior pledge shouldn’t be the identical as we’re speaking about, as a result of authorized entities must ‘be part of the membership’ to learn from the patent pledge. You might be retaining the precise to patent assault anyone who doesn’t comply and be part of your alliance.”
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