TechFlow reports that the DeFi Education Fund (DEF) has filed a petition with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) seeking to invalidate the patent held by patent assertion entity True Return Systems LLC (TRS), which previously attempted to sell the patent as an NFT. Subsequently, TRS sued "MakerDAO" and "Compound Protocol" for alleged patent infringement.
TRS's patent, filed and granted in 2018, claims to invent a method of bringing off-chain data on-chain, including the use of oracles.
The DEF's petition argues that prior art existed in public literature before the patent was granted, including a NASDAQ patent describing techniques for associating off-chain price data with on-chain transaction histories.
DEF aims to protect the rights to use open-source software and prevent TRS from suing other cryptocurrency projects. The USPTO will decide in the coming months whether to accept DEF's petition.
