Patently Absurd

Welcome to open source's latest battleground, where a rejected U.S. patent found new life in French courts.

Two FHE (Fully Homomorphic Encryption) companies are locked in legal warfare over who owns the rights to 'programmable bootstrapping.'

The CEO of Zama says Sunscreen copied their technology without a license. Sunscreen fires back with accusations of patent trolling.

Between them lies a critical piece of privacy technology - and neither side is backing down.

Developers watch nervously as lawyers argue over who owns the building blocks of privacy tech.

But this isn't just a legal spat—it's a pivotal battle for the future of encryption itself.

Will open source cryptography survive its first patent war?

Back in 2019, while building NuCypher, Michael Egorov discovered a way to make encrypted computations faster using GPUs.

That innovation spawned Sunscreen Tech, aiming to enable privacy-preserving smart contracts.

Four years later, this technology sits at the heart of a legal battle threatening to rip apart the fabric of open-source privacy research.

December 3rd, 2023: Sunscreen receives formal notice from Zama's legal team.

The charges? Using patented encryption techniques and making "disparaging" technical comparisons.

Forget rugpulls and smart contract exploits. This battle could determine who gets to build privacy tech - and who gets sued for trying.

But what makes encryption tech worth going to war over?

The Tech

Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) isn't just another crypto buzzword.

Imagine running your entire digital life without ever exposing your data. That's FHE - the cryptographer's wet dream.

Smart contracts where validators are blind. Medical research that keeps patients anonymous. AI that can't spy on your data.

But this revolutionary tech remains locked behind high computational costs and technical bottlenecks.

Right now, doing any real computation on encrypted data is like trying to solve a Rubik's cube wearing boxing gloves - technically possible, but painfully slow.

That's why both Zama and Sunscreen are racing to make FHE actually usable.

First one to crack it gets to shape the future of private computation.

But as groundbreaking as FHE could be, its future is now being decided in courtrooms rather than codebases.

Sounds like some pretty high stakes, doesn’t it?

The Claims

But before you pick sides in this heavyweight bout, let's dig deeper into what each player claims happened.

History has shown us this story before. When competition dies, innovation follows.

Just ask anyone who's played Madden NFL since EA bought exclusive rights to the NFL license.

But more on that later.

Zama's Story

According to Rand Hindi's public statement, this is a case of tech theft disguised as open source development.

Hindi points to spending "years and tens of millions" on FHE technology.

His business model, he states, was transparent: free for research, paid for profit.

In Hindi's telling, what followed was methodical: Sunscreen engineers allegedly appeared repeatedly in Zama's support channels, asking about implementation details and specific code choices.

"We thought they were simply trying to run benchmarks," Hindi states in his response.

According to him, Sunscreen later released their own TFHE implementation that he claims reproduced not just Zama's technology, but even specific bugs from their codebase.

Hindi reports making multiple attempts at resolution, documenting offers ranging from commercial partnership to revenue sharing and potential investment.

According to him, Sunscreen ghosted.

But what do Sunscreen’s receipts really show?

Sunscreen's Defense

Sunscreen challenges this narrative with documented evidence.

First up: The U.S. Patent Office's knockout punch. Their verdict on Zama's precious "programmable bootstrapping"?

Just "an abstract idea without significantly more." Ouch.

The "disparaging" comparisons Zama's lawyers cite?

Sunscreen states these are verifiable benchmark results from their zkSummit12 presentation - which remains publicly available.

In Sunscreen's public response, they assert their TFHE library is original work.

What Zama characterizes as suspicious support channel behavior, Sunscreen maintains was normal open source development practice.

Their smoking gun? Zama's European patent play comes right after getting rejected stateside. Talk about venue shopping.

If Zama wins in France, it's game over for more than just Sunscreen.

Every open-source crypto project becomes a potential target. Innovation dies by a thousand legal cuts.

But someone's not telling the whole truth here. Time to follow the code.

The Paper Trail

The documented evidence tells its own story.

Zama's European patent EP4150852 forms the basis of their legal claims.

Their attempt to patent this technology in the U.S. hit a wall - the Patent Office explicitly rejected it as "an abstract idea without significantly more."

Zama's position on open source appears to have evolved.

Their August 2022 blog post stated unequivocally: "security by obscurity cannot exist" and "the only way to feel confident about a cryptosystem's security is to have the community try to break it."

Fast forward to December 2024: The "community-first" mask slips, replaced by legal threats and licensing demands.

Want proof? It's all out there. Sunscreen's code sits on GitHub, their benchmark results are public record, and their zkSummit12 presentation are there for anyone to verify.

But what happens when mathematical proofs meet patent law?

Tech Showdown

Strip away the legal jargon and what do you find? A fight over math.

Programmable bootstrapping - Zama calls it property, Sunscreen calls it mathematics. Now French courts get to play professor.

The U.S. Patent Office's verdict was clear: "an abstract idea without significantly more." Yet Zama's European patent EP4150852 forms the basis of their legal demands.

While patent battles rage in French courts, real-world alternatives thrive.

Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) aren't just theoretical - they're already running privacy-preserving computations in production.

Intel's recent SGX vulnerabilities show TEEs aren't perfect.

But as henry on X notes: "Unlike ZK, which combined clear PMF, no competition, and a speculative bubble into an incredible technology development arc, FHE must compete with TEEs that provide practical functionality today."

The real kicker? While lawyers argue over math patents, TEE technology keeps evolving.

Every day spent in court is another day competitors advance.

When did protecting intellectual property start meaning destroying innovation?

This isn’t the first time innovation faced a stranglehold.

In the early 2000s, EA Sport’s Madden NFL ruled the sports gaming world, but its dominance was threatened by real competition.

Games like Sega’s NFL 2K and NFL Gameday forced EA Sports to innovate - or risk irrelevance. The result? Two of the best Madden titles in history, back-to-back.

Then EA bought exclusivity rights to the NFL license, locking everyone else out.

What happened next? Innovation flatlined.

Madden’s monopoly meant they didn’t have to try anymore.

Fans got roster updates masquerading as "new games." Progress gave way to profits.

The FHE sector is now standing on the same 50-yard line.

Zama’s legal battle with Sunscreen isn’t just a fight over "programmable bootstrapping."

It’s about control - who gets to innovate and who gets sidelined.

Because if we’ve learned anything from the 2 decade Madden stranglehold, it’s this: monopolies don’t build, they stagnate.

And while Zama and Sunscreen wage war in court, the real risk is that privacy tech itself gets benched.

So who really wins when lawyers claim ownership over math? Not innovation. Not developers. And definitely not users.

How many innovations will die on the altar of intellectual property?

Isn't that the most patently absurd outcome of all?

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