Ripple Labs has filed an appeal with the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit challenging several key rulings in its legal battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The move comes a week after the SEC. presented Ripple's own appeal targets certain aspects of a 2023 court decision that partially upheld Ripple when it sold XRP to investors.
The appeals process, which is expected to continue well into next year, has attracted considerable attention due to its impact on the regulation of digital assets in the US.
“The appeals court will review the record and we have a very good record,” Ripple's chief legal officer Stuart Alderotti said in a statement on Thursday.
“SEC cannot provide new evidence or ask us to provide more. It means that all the drama that we had when we were fighting with documents will not exist.”
Ripple's filing, dated Thursday, outlines four critical issues the company plans to address.
The main reason for the firm's appeal is the argument that the firm's XRP sales should not have been classified as unregistered securities offerings, resulting in a $125 million fine.
Ripple argued under U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that it misused the definition of “investment contract” under the Securities Act of 1933.
In particular, the company disputes the requirement that such a contract impose post-sale obligations on the seller and that buyers have the right to profit from the seller's efforts.
Additionally, Ripple argues that the court ignored the broader regulatory uncertainty surrounding how securities laws apply to crypto.
The company said it did not give the SEC fair notice that its sale of XRP would violate those rules, raising major legal questions about the application of securities regulations to digital assets.
The regulator, meanwhile, has appealed against Ripple's dismissal of the charges, arguing that its programmatic sales of XRP on digital exchanges and its distribution to employees violated those rules.
The regulator alleges that Ripple executives Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larson violated securities laws by offering what they suspected were unregistered sales.
Notably, the SEC did not challenge the district court's ruling that XRP itself is not a security, which remains a major victory for Ripple.
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