Company won’t file infringement lawsuits when alliance members implement standards covered by its patent(s).
Web3 identity company Unstoppable Domains says it won’t assert its patents against any members of the Web3 Domain Alliance.
Specifically, the company stated:
Unstoppable Domains has made what’s referred to as a “non-assertion commitment.” What that means is that Unstoppable Domains has promised that it will not assert any of its “Necessary Claims” under that patent against anyone that implements any standard that Web3 Alliance may develop. “Necessary Claims” are any patent claims that would be unavoidably infringed by the implementation of the standard in question.
In order to prevent anyone from unfairly benefiting from Unstoppable Domains’ non-assertion commitment, Unstoppable Domains may withdraw its commitment to any given implementer if that vendor sues, or threatens to sue, Unstoppable Domains for infringing one of the implementer’s own patents that would be infringed if Unstoppable Domains were to implement the same standard. Intellectual property rights (“IPR”) policies refer to this as a “defensive suspension” term.
At this time, I believe Unstoppable only has one granted patent but has at least one in the application process.
The alliance also announced 52 new members, including “regular” domain companies United Domains and MarkMonitor. The latter’s involvement makes sense, given that trademark holders want to find ways to protect their marks in web3 identities.
They want to be ICANN so bad. Weird hill to die on.