Uniswap achieved a resounding defense success in the industry by winning an important patent case filed on automatic market maker (AMM) technology, which was closely followed by the decentralized finance (DeFi) industry. The court ruling ruled that Uniswap’s underlying token swap formula cannot be specifically protected under patent laws.
Details of the Case and Parties
US-based Uniswap has been operating as a decentralized exchange providing open-source automated token swaps since 2018. Hayden Adams, the name behind this platform, is known for his innovative approaches in the blockchain world. The allegations that led to the lawsuit being filed were based on a patent obtained in 2017. Bprotocol Foundation and LocalCoin Ltd., known for their closeness to the Bancor community, filed a lawsuit against Uniswap Labs and Uniswap Foundation in New York federal court in May 2025, alleging patent infringement.
The focus of the patent case was the fixed multiplier AMM model, known as the “xy=k” formula in the blockchain world, which allows automatic pricing in liquidity pools. The plaintiffs claimed that Uniswap did not obtain the necessary permission despite using this method and requested retroactive financial compensation.
The Court’s Decision and Its Reflections on the Industry
The Uniswap side rejected the allegations and stated that the codes of the platform were shared openly from the beginning. He also argued that the disputed patent is fundamentally based on mathematical principles and that these principles are widely used in blockchain-based systems.
The court ruled in favor of Uniswap on February 11, 2026. Regarding the decision in question, Uniswap’s founder Hayden Adams shared the information on social media through a lawyer that the case was won. The decision showed that patent protection does not apply to underlying financial algorithms, as the plaintiffs claimed.
It was stated that the court emphasized that the code should be transparent and publicly available, therefore the conditions for patent infringement were not met.
DeFi Education Fund and Solana Institute, leading organizations in the DeFi ecosystem, also supported Uniswap during the court process. These organizations noted that patent limitations on key financial formulas could negatively impact innovation in open source ecosystems.
Patent Debate in the DeFi World
Many experts and lawyers in the crypto industry consider the decision as an important development that paves the way for innovation in the sector. Because these basic algorithms used by many decentralized exchanges are widely implemented with open access. Therefore, the introduction of patent protection was causing serious debate in the industry.
Observers said that the case won by Uniswap; He expresses that it points out how difficult it is legally to include financial algorithms developed in open source projects under the umbrella of intellectual property.
