Unicoin strikes first in UNI-on-UNI brawl, drags Uniswap to court over shared letters

TransparentBusiness Inc., which operates as Unicoin, has sued Universal Navigation Inc., doing business as Uniswap Labs, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeking declaratory judgments that its UNICOIN mark does not infringe or dilute Uniswap's claimed marks. The complaint, filed Tuesday, targets Uniswap's alleged UNI, UNISWAP and UNICHAIN marks and asks the court to cancel the U.S. trademark registration for UNI.

According to the filing, Uniswap's counsel sent three demand letters to Unicoin on June 3, July 17 and Aug. 14, accusing the company of trademark infringement, trademark dilution, cybersquatting and unfair competition, and threatening further legal action. The letters demanded that Unicoin stop using UNICOIN and other UNI-formative marks, transfer its unicoin.com and unicoin.org domain names, provide an accounting of revenue and profits, and reimburse Uniswap's legal fees.

Unicoin's complaint also seeks a declaration that the unicoin.com and unicoin.org domains do not violate the federal Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. Cointelegraph reported that it had approached Uniswap Labs for comment on the lawsuit.

The suit was filed weeks before a Sept. 28 public launch date that Unicoin lists on its website for its UNCN token. At the time of writing, DeFiLlama ranked the Uniswap protocol first among decentralized exchanges by 24-hour volume, with more than $3.9 billion.