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Founder and lead developer of Ethereum Title Service (ENS) Nick Johnson is urging blockchain domains firm Unstoppable Domains to drop a not too long ago 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 expertise that makes use of blockchain expertise to find out domains. The patent request was filed with the USA Patent and Trademark Workplace in 2021.
In keeping with Johnson, the patent is “primarily based totally on improvements that ENS developed and accommodates no novel improvements of its personal.” The ENS documentation stipulates that:
“The Ethereum Title 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 similar to Ethereum addresses, different cryptocurrency addresses, content material hashes, and metadata.”
Within the open letter printed on Nov. 17, Johnson claims that each one the ENS work is below open-source licenses, with all requirements publicly accessible for implementation. In keeping with him, continued makes an attempt to contact Unstoppable Domains in regards to the concern have failed in latest months.
“UD has subsequently issued a press launch ‘pledging’ its first patent to the Web3 Area Alliance, an business group based and run by Unstoppable Domains. We admire the sentiment behind this, however regrettably, press releases are usually 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 totally spinoff of our personal innovations; a place we’re ready and prepared to show.,” Johnson warned.
One of many alleged inventors from Unstoppable Domains, Matthew Gould, responded within the thread, extending an open invitation to affix the Web3 Area Alliance, the blockchain area registry group allegedly pledged with the patent. Gould additionally argued that:
“I believe your proposed answer doesn’t consider the truth that we wish there to be a number of naming techniques – not simply ENS – and the one means 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 direct response.
The thread has caught the eye of the crypto group. Bob Summerwill, government director of the Ethereum Traditional Cooperative (ETC Cooperative), noted that requiring organizations to affix the Web3 Area Alliance for rights over the expertise can be a direct assault on the open-source ethos.
“Additionally, Matt, this prior pledge isn’t the identical as we’re speaking about, as a result of authorized entities have to ‘be a part of the membership’ to profit from the patent pledge. You’re retaining the fitting to patent assault anyone who doesn’t comply and be a part of your alliance.”
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