YONA Patent Policy

Published: April 11, 2026

This page describes YONA's royalty-free patent commitment for implementations of covered YONA specifications and is separate from the copyright license for specification text.

1. Why this policy exists

A copyright license, such as CC BY 4.0, grants rights to copy and adapt specification text. It does not, by itself, grant patent rights.

Patents can cover methods and systems. Without a patent commitment, an implementer could be permitted to copy the specification text while still facing patent claims for implementing the normative behavior.

YONA's intent is that implementing covered YONA specifications should not require paying patent royalties to YONA.

2. Scope

This policy applies to implementations of the normative requirements of the following covered ruleset_id values:

  • yona:ruleset:v1.0

If YONA publishes additional rulesets, this page will identify which ruleset_id values are covered by this policy.

3. Definitions

YONA means the publisher or steward of the covered specification. As of the published date above, YONA LLC is the current founder-led steward and publisher of YONA Ruleset 1.0 and its companion documents.

Specification means the normative text for a covered ruleset_id as published by YONA.

Implementation means software or systems that implement the normative requirements of a covered Specification.

Essential Claims means patent claims owned or controlled by YONA that would necessarily be infringed by implementing the normative requirements of a covered Specification.

Essential Claims do not include claims that would arise only from:

  • non-normative examples or explanatory material;
  • optional features not required by the covered Specification;
  • a particular product's UI, branding, business process, deployment architecture, or compliance-policy logic; or
  • Travel Rule transport, Travel Rule payloads, settlement rails, settlement-instruction exchange, settlement execution, or post-ACCEPT data exchange, which are outside YONA's authorization-layer scope.

4. Patent Commitment

Subject to the Defensive Termination section below, YONA grants a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive patent license under YONA's Essential Claims to implement each covered ruleset_id.

This commitment is intended to allow independent implementations to interoperate without permission from, or commercial patent licensing from, YONA.

No approval, membership, registration, contract, reporting obligation, or commercial relationship with YONA is required to rely on this policy for a covered Implementation.

5. Defensive Termination

If you, or an entity you control, bring a patent claim alleging that an implementation of a covered ruleset_id infringes your patent, YONA may terminate the patent license granted to you under this policy for that covered ruleset_id.

This is intended to discourage patent litigation from being used to block interoperable implementations of covered YONA specifications.

6. Contributions

YONA may accept contributions to YONA-published specifications, fixtures, test materials, examples, or code repositories.

If YONA accepts contributions, YONA may require contributors to grant:

  • a copyright license for the contribution; and
  • a royalty-free license to any patent claims necessarily infringed by the contributed material, to the extent those claims would become Essential Claims for covered YONA material.

Any applicable contribution terms would be stated at that time.

7. No effect on interoperability, pilots, or conformance

This patent policy does not change how YONA works in practice. In particular:

  • no registration, approval, or contact with YONA is required;
  • it does not create a runtime network, registry, relay, routing service, directory, or approval system;
  • counterparty, compliance, commercial, and risk decisions remain local to each participant; and
  • YONA message validity, authorization semantics, request/response binding, terminal outcomes, and BIP conformance requirements remain unchanged.

8. Publication and future stewardship

As of the published date above, YONA LLC is the current publisher of yona:ruleset:v1.0 and its companion materials.

If stewardship of future YONA releases is later transferred to a successor body, that transition does not retroactively alter the meaning of this policy for previously published covered materials unless this page is later updated to state otherwise.

Unless this page expressly states otherwise, a later update does not retroactively change the meaning or effect of this policy for prior reliance.

9. Disclaimer

This page is provided for transparency and general information only. It is not legal advice and should be reviewed by your own legal counsel before production reliance or before making patent-risk decisions for a specific implementation or jurisdiction.

This page is provided "AS IS," without warranties or conditions of any kind, and without liability for damages arising from its use, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law.