The United States-based SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) has been provided with an extension to file a discovery plan dealing with the defendants including the co-founder (Chris Larson) as well as the CEO (Brad Garlinghouse) of the prominent digital asset exchange Ripple Labs. The long-held legal fight has been fought since the last days of 2020’s December, following the allegations put by the SEC against the exchange to have made nearly $1.3B by the XRP token’s security offering without any registration.

The exchange negates its native token XRP to be a security and rather claims it to be a means of international payments. In this way, it has been asserted that the securities regulator remained unsuccessful in providing Ripple with fair notice to inform that the respective token counted to be a security. Although the decision in support of the regulator at present denotes a slight victory, some experts have revealed that the watchdog is attempting to procrastinate the lawsuit to make Ripple Labs get frustrated.

The new advancement was mentioned by James K. Filan (the defense lawyer as well as a former federal prosecutor) who referred to the written order given by the Court. The order states that the securities regulator shall report the Court regarding the position thereof over if there is a requirement for any further discovery in the time of a week since the submission from the defendants.

As included in the delayed plan, the defendants currently have time until 8th April to file a response to the complaints of the SEC, whereas the decision of the SEC over the further discovery is to be made in the next week on 15th April, while a mutually suggested scheduling order would be liable on 22nd April. Nevertheless, the respective dates are not final and some modifications may be incorporated according to the rapidness of the case of Ripple Labs.

According to Filan, the submission of the response from the individual defendants is a key event. On the filing of the answer, even if in advance of 8th April, there are two weeks left for the SEC to clarify its position regarding the discovery as well as the Joint Proposed Scheduling Order.

The reaction from the XRP community was mixed as some were angry at the securities regulator for attempting to have more time though it has lost the case already, whereas others like “r ColeTheMailman” (a Twitter consumer) expressed that delays could be beneficial for XRP in long term.