ENS developers urge Unstoppable Domains to drop patents or face lawsuit

Founder and pb developer of Ethereum Name Service (ENS) Nick Johnson is urging blockchain domains institution Unstoppable Domains to driblet a precocious awarded patent oregon look a lawsuit, according to an unfastened missive shared connected X (formerly Twitter). 

In January, Unstoppable Domains was granted its archetypal patent, US11558344, which claims that Braden River Pezeshki, Matthew Everett Gould and Bogdan Gusiev are the inventors of a exertion that uses blockchain exertion to find domains. The patent petition was filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office successful 2021. 

According to Johnson, the patent is "based wholly connected innovations that ENS developed and contains nary caller innovations of its own." The ENS documentation stipulates that:

"The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is simply a distributed, open, and extensible naming strategy based connected the Ethereum blockchain. ENS's occupation is to representation human-readable names similar 'alice. eth' to machine-readable identifiers specified arsenic Ethereum addresses, different cryptocurrency addresses, contented hashes, and metadata."

In the unfastened missive published connected Nov. 17, Johnson claims that each the ENS enactment is nether open-source licenses, with each standards publically disposable for implementation. According to him, continued attempts to interaction Unstoppable Domains astir the contented person failed successful caller months.

Screenshot of patent granted to Unstoppable Domains connected January 17, 2023. Source: USPTO.

"UD has subsequently issued a property merchandise ‘pledging’ its archetypal patent to the Web3 Domain Alliance, an manufacture radical founded and tally by Unstoppable Domains. We admit the sentiment down this, but regrettably, property releases are not legally binding," Johnson noted successful the thread.

"We are frankincense requesting that Unstoppable Domains enactment ineligible value down its PR commitment, with an unconditional and irrevocable patent pledge."

The ENS Labs is "ready to situation this patent, which we judge is wholly derivative of our ain inventions; a presumption we are capable and consenting to demonstrate.," Johnson warned.

One of the alleged inventors from Unstoppable Domains, Matthew Gould, responded successful the thread, extending an unfastened invitation to articulation the Web3 Domain Alliance, the blockchain domain registry enactment allegedly pledged with the patent. Gould besides argued that:

"I deliberation your projected solution doesn’t instrumentality into relationship the information that we privation determination to beryllium aggregate naming systems - not conscionable ENS - and the lone mode to guarantee that aboriginal is to person a spot wherever everyone (not conscionable UD and ENS) collaborate."

Cointelegraph reached retired to Unstoppable Domains, but did not person an contiguous response.

The thread has caught the attraction of the crypto community. Bob Summerwill, enforcement manager of the Ethereum Classic Cooperative (ETC Cooperative), noted that requiring organizations to articulation the Web3 Domain Alliance for rights implicit the exertion is besides a nonstop onslaught connected the open-source ethos.

"Also, Matt, this anterior pledge is not the aforesaid arsenic we are talking about, due to the fact that ineligible entities request to 'join the club' to payment from the patent pledge. You are retaining the close to patent onslaught anybody who does not comply and articulation your alliance."

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