Uniswap has won a closely watched patent dispute over one of DeFi’s best-known trading formulas. On February 11, 2026, a federal court in New York ruled for Uniswap, rejecting patent infringement claims brought by Bprotocol Foundation and LocalCoin Ltd. against Uniswap Labs and Uniswap Foundation. The case centered on the constant product AMM model, “xy=k”, a pricing mechanism widely used in decentralized liquidity pools.
The lawsuit traced back to a 2017 patent filing
According to the source material, Uniswap has operated in the United States since 2018 as a decentralized exchange offering open-source automated token swaps. The platform was founded by Hayden Adams. The legal dispute grew out of claims tied to a 2017 patent filing. In May 2025, Bprotocol Foundation and LocalCoin Ltd., both described as connected to the Bancor community, filed suit in New York federal court and alleged that Uniswap had used the method without permission while seeking retrospective monetary damages.
The plaintiffs focused on the mechanism used to price assets inside liquidity pools. In blockchain markets, that formula is known simply as “xy=k.” It is one of the basic designs behind automated market makers, so the dispute reached beyond a single product feature and into the question of whether a foundational financial algorithm can be enforced through patent claims in an open crypto environment.
Uniswap argued the code was public from the start
Uniswap rejected the allegations and said its code had been openly shared from the beginning. It also argued that the patent at issue was rooted in mathematical principles that are broadly used across blockchain-based systems.
The court accepted Uniswap’s position. The source says Hayden Adams announced the legal win on social media through a lawyer. The ruling showed that patent protection did not apply in the way the plaintiffs claimed for these core financial algorithms. The court also highlighted the transparency and public accessibility of the code, a point that undercut the conditions needed to support an infringement finding.
Broader DeFi support framed the case as an open-source issue
During the litigation, Uniswap received support from groups including the DeFi Education Fund and Solana Institute. Their concern was direct: if patent restrictions were extended to basic financial formulas, innovation inside open-source ecosystems could be harmed. That made the case larger than a dispute between two sides in court. It became part of a wider argument over how intellectual property rules should apply to publicly developed DeFi infrastructure.
The source also notes that many crypto industry experts and legal professionals view the decision as an important development for innovation in the sector. Many decentralized exchanges rely on the same basic algorithm in an open and accessible way. For that reason, the ruling adds weight to the ongoing legal debate over whether financial algorithms developed in open-source projects can fit cleanly inside traditional intellectual property protection.