In response to Unstoppable Domains’ recently awarded patent, ENS developer Nick Johnson has issued an open letter urging the company to drop the patent or face a lawsuit. Johnson claims that the patent is based entirely on innovations developed by ENS and contains no novel innovations of its own. He states that all ENS work is under open-source licenses and publicly available for implementation. Despite attempts to contact Unstoppable Domains about the issue, Johnson claims that communication has failed in recent months. He requests that Unstoppable Domains put legal weight behind its PR commitment and make an unconditional and irrevocable patent pledge. Unstoppable Domains has not yet responded to the request. The thread caught the attention of the crypto community, with some arguing that requiring organizations to join the Web3 Domain Alliance for rights over the technology is a direct attack on the open-source ethos.
