The DeFi Education Fund (DEF), a decentralized finance platform, has accused True Return Systems of being a “patent troll”. To address this, DEF has taken action by submitting a petition to the USPTO to review one of its patents.
On September 7, 2023, DEF filed a lengthy petition (more than 90 pages) with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. The purpose of this petition is to challenge a patent held by True Return Systems.
DEF legal Chief, Amanda Tuminelli said in a September 11 Twitter post that the patent which was granted in 2018 lays claim to a process for “linking off-chain data to a blockchain.
To simplify, this patent relates to a method of connecting data that’s not on the blockchain with the blockchain.
Amanda Tuminelli, the legal head of DEF, explained that True Return Systems attempted to sell this patent as a non-fungible token (NFT), which raised concerns within the DeFi community.
DEF argues that the technology described in True Return’s patent was not innovative when the patent was approved. They claim that there were already similar technologies in existence, such as the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), as well as decentralized storage platforms like Sia, Storj, and Swarm.
DEF has taken action by submitting a petition to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Their goal is to protect the rights of using and creating open-source software.
They want to prevent True Return from potentially suing cryptocurrency projects and also provide legal support to MakerDAO and Compound.
True Return now has three months to choose whether to respond to this petition. After six months, the USPTO will decide whether to review the patent. If they do, they have another 12 months to determine if the patent should be revoked or canceled.
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