In a heated lawsuit between the Ripple Lab Inc. and R3, the former lost the opportunity to fight against the latter over the contested contract in a San Francisco court. Now, a New York court will decide the fate of both the parties.


Ripple Vs R3: Ripple loses home-turf advantage

Ripple Labs, the creator of the Ripple cryptocurrency for payment protocol and exchange network, has been engaged in a heated legal battle with its blockchain rival R3. R3 Holdco is a software development company that is backed by a consortium of banks which is also in the race to develop the blockchain tools.

A few days back the San Francisco-based Ripple lost the lawsuit on its home turf, California over the ownership of its XRP cryptocurrency that once was worth more than $16 billion.

Ripple made a bid to speed up its appeal of an order to the San-Francisco court that denied the request and in process rejected the lawsuit against R3. Now, the probability is the New York court will be the sole decider of the situation.

Ripple has argued that if the battle gets on to the home turf of R3 i.e. Manhattan, the company would face “irreparable injury.”


Also, read… Will ICO Issuers Face Lawsuits In Near Future

R3, Ripple game of accusations: who will lose billion dollar worth of XRPs?

The dispute started in September 2017, when R3 Holdco accused the Ripple Labs of not paying 5 billion XRP tokens that were owed to the latter under their partnership agreement. R3 filed a lawsuit against Ripple in New York and Delaware for violation of the agreement.

According to the lawsuit of R3, the Chief Executive of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse tried to terminate the contract through an email to David Rutter, Chief Executive of R3. R3 has claimed that the contract does not give Ripple the right to terminate the contract unilaterally. Now, it is asking the court to declare that R3 is entitled to all of its rights.

Later, Ripple countersued R3 for entering the partnership under the false pretenses. It also claimed that due to R3’s failure to fulfill its promises, Ripple terminated the agreement.

The key point of the situation was that the contract included an option that allowed R3 to buy about 5 billion XRP tokens at the price of $0.0085 each that too at any time before 2019 ends. Given that contested amount of tokens are worth more than $16 billion, it’s a huge deal for both the parties.

From the two courts Delaware and New York, the former has already dismissed the case in October. This leaves the New York court the sole decider of the fate of billion-dollar situation.

What are your views on this lawsuit? Do you think after losing the home-court advantage, Ripple has any chance of winning? Share your thoughts with us!

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