The Bancor Protocol team has filed a lawsuit against Uniswap Labs and the Uniswap Foundation, accusing them of stealing their intellectual property. The lawsuit pertains to the Constant Product Automated Market Maker (CPAMM) technology developed by Bancor Protocol, which they claim was unlawfully used by Uniswap to implement its projects.
This is reported by Finway
According to the documents, Bancor patented its technology back in January 2017, while Uniswap Labs launched a similar solution only in 2018. The lawsuit alleges that Uniswap has made “significant profits” from using Bancor’s patented technology without their permission.
Comments from the Parties Involved
Mark Richardson, project lead at Bancor, stated:
“When an organization continuously uses our invention without our permission and does so as a means of competing with us, we must take action. For the past eight years, Uniswap has used our patented technology in its projects without our consent. As a result, we have taken legal action to protect our technology for the benefit of the entire DeFi community.”
For its part, Uniswap Labs dismissed all allegations, calling the lawsuit baseless. A representative from the studio remarked in an interview:
“This lawsuit is without merit, and we will defend ourselves accordingly. The Uniswap protocol code is public and has been for many years. What a wasteful distraction at a moment of historic momentum for DeFi.”
Community Reaction
Uniswap Labs CEO Hayden Adams also shared his thoughts, stating that this is
“the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. I look forward to the moment when I can stop thinking about it, hearing from our lawyer that we won.”
However, not all community members supported Uniswap. Some users pointed out that the Bancor team actually invented the AMM architecture, while Uniswap itself is fighting to protect its intellectual property by preventing others from using the code of later versions of its protocol. According to DeFiLlama, Uniswap currently ranks first in total value locked among decentralized exchanges, while Bancor Protocol ranks 41st.
It is worth noting that in 2023, the Bprotocol Foundation itself became the subject of a lawsuit when investors accused the organization of promoting unlicensed securities and misleading regarding the effectiveness of its loss protection mechanism.