A decentralized finance (DeFi) advocacy group has asked the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to review patents owned by a company it accuses of being a “patent troll” seeking to profit from patent litigation.
The DeFi Education Fund (DEF) said in a blog post on September 11 that on September 7 it filed a more than 90-page petition with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board seeking to cancel a patent owned by True Return Systems .
The patent, granted in 2018, claims to have a process for “linking off-chain data to the blockchain,” DEF legal chief Amanda Tuminelli said in a Sept. 11 (Twitter) post.
Tuminelli claims True Return is trying to sell its patents as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). In the absence of a buyer, it filed a lawsuit against DeFi protocols MakerDAO and Compound Finance in October.
4/ When that didn’t work, in October 2022, TRS sued MakerDAO and “Compound Protocol” in two separate federal court actions, alleging patent infringement.
Case file link: https://t.co/w47v7fAAEt https://t.co/ExTapxhKNq— Amanda Tuminelli (@amandatums) September 11, 2023
“Clearly [True Return’s] The goal is to list defendants who cannot answer complaints so that [it] It’s possible to get a default judgment,” Tuminelli said.
She claimed True Return will attempt to enforce court rulings against token holders, repeating the process with other protocols “that either cannot challenge them in court or don’t have the resources to do so.”
DEF claimed that the technology in True Return was not new when it was patented, and claimed to highlight similar existing technologies such as the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and decentralized storage platforms Sia, Storj and Swarm.
8/ In our petition, we pointed out that the “invention” in the patent was not new in 2018. There are many examples of “prior art” that the Patent Board can look at – for example – a patent linking price data to Nasdaq – chain-to-chain transaction history https://t.co/amz3jREab7 pic.twitter.com/RJ3VVGFeEj
— Amanda Tuminelli (@amandatums) September 11, 2023
True Return Systems acknowledged Cointelegraph’s request for comment but had no immediate comment.
related: SEC’s Gary Gensler takes firm stance on cryptocurrency enforcement at Senate hearing
DEF said it launched the petition to the USPTO to defend the ability to use and develop open source software, block any potential plans by True Return to sue cryptocurrency projects, and help MakerDAO and Compound with their legal defense.
True Return has three months to choose to respond to the petition, six months later the USPTO must decide whether to continue examining the patent, and 12 months to decide whether the patent should be revoked.
Magazine: Hall of Flame: Cryptocurrency Lawyer Irina Heaver Talks Death Threats, Lawsuit Predictions
