According to the complaint filed on Tuesday in federal court, TransparentBusiness is asking the court to formally declare that its UNICOIN mark does not infringe or dilute Uniswap’s suite of claimed intellectual property, which includes the UNI, UNISWAP, and UNICHAIN marks. Furthermore, the legal filing goes a step further by petitioning the court to order the cancellation of the United States trademark registration currently held for the UNI mark. The preemptive lawsuit arrives at a sensitive time for Unicoin, coming just weeks before the publicly anticipated launch date of its UNCN token, which is currently scheduled for September 28 according to information published on the company’s official website.
The roots of the federal lawsuit trace back to a series of escalating communications from legal representatives for Uniswap Labs. The complaint details that Uniswap’s counsel dispatched three separate formal demand letters on June 3, July 17, and August 14. These letters formally accused Unicoin of engaging in trademark infringement, trademark dilution, cybersquatting, and unfair competition, while simultaneously threatening further legal action should the alleged violations continue. According to the court documents, the demand letters insisted that Unicoin immediately cease and desist from utilizing the UNICOIN mark alongside any other UNI-formative branding.
Additionally, the demands required Unicoin to transfer ownership of its corporate and project-related web domains, specifically unicoin.com and unicoin.org, directly to Uniswap Labs. The letters also demanded that Unicoin provide a detailed accounting of its revenues and profits, as well as fully reimburse Uniswap for its accrued legal fees. In response to these aggressive demands, TransparentBusiness’s lawsuit explicitly seeks a judicial declaration confirming that the operation and ownership of the unicoin.com and unicoin.org domains do not violate the federal Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, thereby pushing back against the foundational allegations leveled by Uniswap’s legal team.
As the legal proceedings begin to unfold in the Southern District of New York, industry observers are watching closely to see how the dispute might impact both protocols’ market positions. At the time of this writing, data from the decentralized finance analytics platform DeFiLlama ranked the Uniswap protocol in the leading position among all decentralized exchanges based on 24-hour trading volume, processing more than $3.9 billion in transactions. This immense trading volume underscores the market visibility, brand recognition, and economic weight of the Uniswap ecosystem, factors that heavily influence trademark protection strategies in the decentralized technology sector.
In light of the newly filed lawsuit, Cointelegraph has formally reached out to Uniswap Labs for comment regarding the litigation and its ongoing trademark enforcement efforts. The intellectual property dispute between Unicoin and Uniswap Labs mirrors similar contentious trademark battles emerging across the broader cryptocurrency and digital asset industries, where projects frequently vie for linguistic and branding space within overlapping technological categories. As the September 28 public launch date for Unicoin’s UNCN token approaches, the progression of this lawsuit in federal court will likely establish important precedents regarding the boundaries of trademark enforcement for token issuers and decentralized protocol developers operating in the United States.
