Bancor sues Uniswap, alleging patent infringement on its DEX smart contract technology

Mars Finance News, on May 20, according to The Block, developers behind Bancor have filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Uniswap Labs and the Uniswap Foundation, alleging unauthorized use of their foundational decentralized trading platform technology. The lawsuit was initiated by the non-profit Bprotocol Foundation supporting Bancor protocol development and LocalCoin Ltd., Bancor's original developers. The lawsuit was submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, claiming that the Uniswap protocol was built on Bancor's patented Constant Product Automated Market Maker (CPAMM) infrastructure. Bancor invented the CPAMM model in 2016 and developed a mechanism supporting permissionless on-chain transactions through smart contracts. The protocol published a whitepaper and filed a U.S. patent application in 2017. Bancor obtained two patents that same year and launched the first DEX based on CPAMM. The lawsuit states that Uniswap's original protocol launched in November 2018 used the same CPAMM design without authorization. Bancor accuses Uniswap of deploying their intellectual property without consent to "profiteer".