A federal court in Delaware has dismissed a patent infringement lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, ruling the underlying patent invalid and explicitly referencing Ripple’s framework as an example of existing blockchain infrastructure.
The Case
Australian fintech firm Identitii Limited had sued JPMorgan Chase in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, alleging the bank infringed its patent, known as the 413 Patent, which covers a method of attaching enriched data records to financial tokens on a blockchain network.
The Ruling
Judge Gregory B. Williams issued a memorandum opinion on May 29, 2026, invalidating the patent under Section 101 of the Alice doctrine, the legal standard used to reject patents that claim abstract ideas implemented on generic computer systems.
The court found that Identitii’s invention relied entirely on conventional, off-the-shelf technology rather than any novel technical contribution. In a notable passage, the opinion cited Ripple directly, stating that the 413 Patent itself allows the invention to be practiced on “the Ripple framework, protocol and gateway, or more generally any blockchain based framework.”
The reference was not incidental. It was the court’s way of demonstrating that the patent described nothing proprietary. If an invention can run on any existing blockchain, including Ripple’s publicly known infrastructure, it does not meet the threshold for patent protection under Alice.
What It Means
The dismissal is a significant win for JPMorgan and a broader signal to fintech patent holders that claiming blockchain-based processes as proprietary inventions faces a high legal bar in U.S. courts. For Ripple, the court’s reference to its framework as an established standard carries a different kind of significance: a federal judge has effectively treated the Ripple protocol as recognised, foundational blockchain infrastructure.
No appeal has been announced by Identitii as of publication.
