Hayden Adams, founder of Uniswap, posted on the The repository alone has been forked about 4,700 times. But branding is very different from a decentralized protocol or an open source interface. The Uniswap brand can be used in a variety of ways, but there are restrictions in the trademark policy. For example: a forked project can Say 'built on the Uniswap protocol,' but not 'built by the Uniswap team.' Our trademark policy is based on Linux and Mozilla's policies and is rooted in open source best practices."
Hayden Adams also explains why anyone can fork the user interface (UI), but not the brand. “Being able to fork the interface helps increase decentralization. If the UI that Uniswap runs on goes down, it’s important that people are still able to access the protocol. (Through aggregators/direct integration is also possible, but it does help) This also accelerates innovation and provides public goods to the space (for example, half of the projects in DeFi use our UI code).
However, Hayden Adams pointed out that "using brands for forks does not increase decentralization, but may mislead and be harmful to users. Unlike immutable on-chain protocols, interface forks run by different teams have different security properties .In fact, every week, scammers create dozens or even hundreds of fake versions of the user interface in an attempt to trick users into thinking it is safe, while the fake interface actually steals users' funds. Trademark policies make these scam sites There is a chance of being shut down. It would also hurt Uniswap Labs if people were scammed on sites that looked like we operated it. We have excellent security measures in place and our users should know when they can interact with our products, and Don't get confused. Finally, if you think brands should be completely permissionless and decentralized like blockchain or DeFi protocols...my sincere opinion is that this is completely insane and anyone who agrees with this view is completely lost Be sensible."