Ripple vs R3: Legal battle ends; parties sign a confidential agreement

On 10th September, Ripple Labs Inc. and XRP II, LLC released an official statement to Business Wire confirming that Ripple and R3 a distributed database technology company that heads a consortium of more than 200 firms have reached a settlement of all outstanding legal disputes.

The announcement stated that the two are looking forward to putting the disputes behind them. Ripple said the terms of the agreement between the two will remain confidential.

According to a report published by Reuters in 2017, the legal battle between the two began on 8th September 2017 when R3 slashed a complaint on Ripple in the Delaware Chancery Court.

The lawsuit stated that the two companies entered into a partnership in 2016. The partnership gives R3 a legal right to buy 5 Billion XRP tokens with each token valued at $0.0085 until September 2019.

The lawsuit claimed that in June 2017, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse sent an e-mail to R3’s Chief Executive David Rutter, attempting to break the contract.

According to the report, the company alleged that the terms of the partnership did not allow Ripple to terminate it unless both parties agreed to do so. The company, in turn, appealed to the court to declare that it is entitled to all the rights mentioned in the partnership that includes allowing it to purchase XRP at any point in time until the contract ended.

Ripple then filed a countersuit in the Supreme Court of California on the same day. The actual document obtained revealed that Ripple alleged R3 of tricking them into entering a partnership and breaching the same after the signing.

A part of the complaint read:

“Beginning in 2016, R3 touted itself to Ripple as a leading consortium of banks with whom Ripple should Ripple should partner. R3 represented to Ripple, among other things, that R3 would work to get Ripple access to R3’s large body of banks, would help promote Ripple’s technology and XRP to those banks, and would be a foundational component of Ripple’s success. With respect to these efforts, R3’s CEO assured to Ripple that “the endgame IS commercialization of a product.”

The complaint also stated that almost immediately after they came together in partnership, “R3 disappeared as a partner.”

It concluded by saying:

“In June of 2017, after having burned almost a year waiting for R3 to live up to its promises, Ripple terminated the agreements. R3 failed to cure its material breaches within 10 days and instead threatened Ripple with litigation. Ripple brings this lawsuit to address the harm caused to it by R3’s fraud, breaches, and misconduct.”

The legal battle dragged on till September 2018 to reach its end, with a confidential mutual agreement between the two parties.

Twitterati Crypto 589 tweeted:

“SBI has brought them together. Hopefully, they can work together in the future.”

Twitter user Michael Strong tweeted:

“I do hope that Ripple discloses the details since this involves a substantial amount of XRP.”