Crypto09 September, 20262 min read
Unicoin Sues Uniswap Labs in U.S. Court, Seeks Cancellation of UNI Trademark Registration
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Unicoin sues Uniswap Labs in SDNY seeking declarations that UNICOIN doesn't infringe UNI trademarks. It also seeks cancellation of Uniswap's federal UNI trademark registration.
Trademark fight in New York
Unicoin, through TransparentBusiness Inc., sued Uniswap Labs in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeking declarations that its UNICOIN mark does not infringe or dilute Uniswap’s claimed marks and asking the court to cancel US trademark registration for UNI.
The complaint says Uniswap’s counsel sent three demand letters on June 3, July 17 and Aug. 14, accusing Unicoin of trademark infringement, dilution, cybersquatting and unfair competition, and threatening further legal action.
Uniswap demanded that Unicoin stop using UNICOIN and other UNI-formative marks, transfer its unicoin.com and unicoin.org domains, provide an accounting of revenue and profits, and reimburse Uniswap’s legal fees.
Unicoin framed its case as a declaratory judgment action filed in response to Uniswap’s legal demands, and it also sought a declaration that unicoin.com and unicoin.org domains do not violate the federal Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act.
What Unicoin argues
A central part of Unicoin’s case challenges the strength of the UNI mark itself, with the filing arguing that “uni” is a common prefix derived from the Latin word unus, meaning “one,” and appears in words ranging from unit and union to universe, university and unicorn.
The complaint says more than 3,600 registrations in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office database contain UNI, with approximately 1,000 currently live, and it extends that argument to crypto by citing multiple projects that use UNI or names beginning with the same letters.
Unicoin also disputes risk of consumer confusion by describing UNICOIN as an asset-backed cryptocurrency marketed under the tagline “The Smart Coin for Smart People,” while Uniswap operates a decentralized exchange tied to its UNI governance token and Unichain blockchain.
In the dispute over branding, Unicoin said it had withdrawn plans for a separate governance token under the UNICOIN name and renamed a planned proprietary blockchain so it no longer used a UNI prefix.
UNI registration and next steps
Unicoin is separately challenging U.S. Trademark Registration No. 7,307,721 for UNI, arguing that the term is generic or, at most, descriptive without secondary meaning and fails to function as an identifier of a single source.
The filing says the registration lists Sept. 16, 2020 as the first commercial use date and was registered in February 2024, and it argues that because the registration is less than five years old, it has not become incontestable under federal trademark law.
Unicoin also asked the court to settle the dispute before Uniswap brings an infringement case, after Uniswap rejected Unicoin’s June 23 response and maintained that UNICOIN was likely to cause confusion with UNISWAP, UNI and UNICHAIN.
In parallel, the lawsuit was filed weeks before the Sept. 28 public launch date that Unicoin lists on its website for the UNCN token, while DeFiLlama ranked the Uniswap protocol first among decentralized exchanges by 24-hour volume, with more than $3.9 billion.