Uphold says that CEO, Anthony Watson, is not going to sue Bitcoin community member and author, Andreas Antonopoulos.

“WOW chill internet! LOL”, says Watson

In a recent article published by Cointelegraph, it was reported that CEO of Uphold, formerly BitReserve, Anthony Watson, was to sue community-favourite, cryptocurrency security expert Andreas Antonopoulos over his use of the phrase, ‘The Internet of Money’, which happens to be Uphold’s slogan. Uphold reached out to Cointelegraph to clarify what Watson had said and reiterated that Watson had and has no intention of suing Antonopoulous.

Caitlin Regan, head of marketing and communications, Uphold, says to Cointelegraph:

"Claims that Uphold's CEO Anthony Watson is suing him over the use of Internet of Money… [are] false. The real (and public) statement he made on Twitter, available to all to see, was that he was going to "talk to his lawyers." The whole issue started when Andreas kept attacking us over Twitter. We did not even initiate the conversation with him on the subject nor did Anthony want to continue to engage with him - but he and his followers would not stop...it was the only reference to lawyers - and not a lawsuit.”

Many will be surprised to know that this was the only reference to a lawsuit or ‘suing’ in the Twitter confrontation, apart from Watson’s later clarification that he was “not suing anyone.”

Trademark sparring on the rise

The confrontation was over Antonopoulos’s use of the phrase, ‘the Internet of money’. Watson argues that Uphold has the trademark for the phrase in the US and EU, while Antonopoulos says that since their use of the phrase was not its first commercial use, they don’t have the right to trademark it and would likely lose it if they chose to sue him for his use of it.

In his book, Mastering Bitcoin, published on 20th December 2014, the author says on page 16 of Chapter 1 - Introduction, “As a developer, I see bitcoin as akin to the Internet of money.”