Bancor, the creator of a smart contract-based automated market maker, is suing Uniswap for patent infringement, alleging the decentralized finance exchange has used its technology without permission and profited significantly from it.
According to the May 20 announcement of the lawsuit, Bancor designed the technology in 2016 and patented it in January 2017. The technology underpins the “constant product automated market maker,” which involves using mathematics to add or withdraw resources from a liquidity pool. The application subsequently led to two issued patents.
Bancor alleges that Uniswap used the invention to create its protocol, launched in November 2018. The two organizations are considered competitors in the sector of decentralized finance (DeFi).
“When an organization continuously uses our invention without our authorization and does so as a means of competing with us, we must take action,” said Mark Richardson, project lead at Bancor.
At the time of publication, Uniswap had not publicly responded to the