I wasnโt going to comment on Sunscreenโs allegations initially, but some people I respect and admire have unfortunately rushed to conclusions without asking me about it first. So here is what actually happened and why we decided to take action.
I find it extremely disheartening that anyone would suggest Zama is a patent troll or a bully. This is an insult to Pascal Paillier, Nigel Smart and all others members of our team who spent decades working on FHE.
We spent years and tens of millions of dollars building our FHE technology. And we have always been transparent about our business model: anyone can use our technology for free for research, prototyping and personal use, but for commercial use a proper commercial license is required. Thatโs how we are able to publish everything while still having a business. This dual licensing model is very common in open source.
In the 5 years since we founded Zama, we never had any issue with it. There are thousands of developers and researchers using our code for non commercial purposes, and dozens of customers paying us to use it commercially. We have never refused to give a license to someone who asked for it, and we even work with some of our competitors.
The reason people work with us is because we build great products, not because they have no choice. There are plenty of alternatives out there, from other FHE schemes such as CKKS or BGV to other technologies such as MPC, ZK and TEEs.
Now to Sunscreen. We can debate the merits of IP in open source, and I would gladly do so on a X space or podcast. But this is not it, this is a simple case of a company using another companyโs technology without a proper license.
For the past couple of years, Sunscreen has been publicly saying in their blog posts, in talks and to investors that they had their own version of FHE that was better than Zamaโs. But since none of it was open source, we couldn't actually tell.
During that time however, Sunscreenโs engineers kept asking dozens and dozens of questions on Zamaโs developer support channels. Questions about why we implemented things a certain way, or how to modify this or that part of our code base. We thought they were simply trying to run benchmarks to compare, so we helped them by answering their numerous questions. We love when people try to beat us, because it forces us to be even better. We even invite our competitors to talk at our own events!
Earlier this year, Sunscreen published an implementation of TFHE on their github. To our surprise, we found that not only did it replicate the core of our technology (programmable bootstrapping), it even reproduced some bugs we had in a previous implementation!
At this point I tried several times to contact Sunscreenโs CEO, asking her to clarify their intended use of our technology. My purpose here was simple: if she told me this was just for research or benchmarking, then we would be perfectly fine with it. When we finally had a chance to chat however, she told me this wasnโt just for research and that she had plans to use it in a commercial product, at which point I said we should put a commercial partnership in place and have Zama support them. I offered various ways that this partnership could happen: as a customer, as a revenue share partner, as an investor etc. My point here was to give her options.
Eventually Sunscreen made it clear they weren't interested in working together, to which I replied they should then remove our technology from their codebase. I also pointed them to alternative FHE schemes they could use, to make sure they had a fallback. Nobody forced Sunscreen to use our technology, they chose to use it. From this point, they simply stopped responding.
A few days later, without warning, Zama received an official letter from Sunscreenโs lawyers, threatening to sue Zama for โtortious interference with prospective economic advantage and interference with contractual relations under the laws of California (and other jurisdictions)โ, and saying that Zamaโs patents have no value and that they would not remove it from their products unless we sent them a clear, detailed explanation of where our patents were used in their code. Sunscreen, not Zama, turned this into a legal dispute.
So naturally we answered back through our own lawyers, sending a very detailed explanation showing line by line where their code used our technology, and asking that they stop using it for commercial purposes. We also asked that they stop lying publicly about benchmarks, as this is simply false marketing and detrimental to Zama and the entire space.
So yes, we do think we have the right to defend ourselves against a company that appropriates our work as their own, makes blatantly false claims about it and sends us their lawyers instead of trying to solve this amicably.
If Sunscreen wants to solve this, itโs very simple:
- Either they get a proper license
- Or they make it clear itโs purely for research purposes
- Or they stop using our technology commercially and use one of the many existing alternatives
If
@zama and
@randhindi believe in their work, we invite them to compete with
@sunscreentech in a way that moves the industry forward rather than engage in secret campaigns of intimidation, IP trolling, and speech suppression. Thread ๐งต๐
On December 3, following a 6+ month long sustained campaign of harassment against
@sunscreentech and our investors, we received formal notice from
@zamaโs legal counsel containing frivolous accusations of disparagement and patent infringement in France.
@zama is attempting to censor free speech and scientific discussion.
@zama has alleged technical comparisons between our own TFHE library and their library during our zkSummit12 talk amount to โdisparagementโ and demand โfinancial compensation.โ This is absurd and offensive.
Sunscreen stands for the principles of open source and free speech and we're proud to have built the most performant FHE compiler to date.
Citing European patent EP4150852, Zama also asserts the sole right to use a technique commonly referred to as programmable bootstrapping. Weโre disappointed that IP trolling has become a consideration in our industry and
@zamaโs attempt to register a similar patent in the United States was properly rejected by the patent office [
patentcenter.uspto.gov/appliโฆ]. Apparently,
@zama's claimed invention is an "abstract idea without significantly more."
@zama has indicated they will initiate proceedings in French court come December 20 if we donโt comply with their long list of demands.
The letter from
@zama's legal counsel along with their demands can be viewed here:
drive.google.com/file/d/1GJ-โฆ
Our technical presentation at
@zeroknowledgefm that
@zama alleges is โdisparagementโ that caused them โcommercial and moral damageโ can be watched here:
youtube.com/watch?v=2s252VRnโฆ. Our allegedly โlitigiousโ TFHE library is available here:
github.com/Sunscreen-tech/Suโฆ
Our evidence if you wish to see for yourself:
docs.google.com/document/d/1โฆ
We will vigorously defend ourselves against attempts to enforce illegitimate IP claims over cryptographic techniques in the public domain. We will loudly reject attempts to censor legitimate technical discussion and block scientific advancement. And we will fight for these principles and the future of FHE.