NFT.
Chances are, you would’ve heard this term before.
NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token.
So what IS an NFT?
An NFT is a unit of data stored on a digital ledger, called a blockchain.
It certifies a digital asset to be unique and therefore not interchangeable.
These digital assets can be in a form of items such as photos, videos, audio, and many other types of digital files.
If you have heard of NFT, it is probably because you’ve seen the articles published online of people paying millions of dollars for a single JPEG file.
This reason alone is one of the factors contributing to the boom of NFT buying and selling.
The current Covid-19 pandemic has also led to more and more creators turning to the digital space to increase revenue.
The main topic which we will touch on today will be;
How are the intellectual property rights for these digital assets being protected?
The answer would very much fall on Copyright.
The rights will always remain with the creator and generally does not confer to the buyer, unless specifically specified.
This means that if you created an NFT, and that NFT was sold to somebody, that person does not own the rights or license to the artwork. The buyer is merely the owner of said NFT and not the creator.
Because NFTs are digital files, it is very easy to counterfeit.
Taking a look at an NFT marketplace, you will be able to find countless counterfeits of popular NFTs being sold.
If you happen to find yourself in this position, the best course of action would be to go after the host or marketplace.
A letter of demand should be written to the host, stating that one of your original creations have been counterfeited and is being sold on the marketplace.
If you are able to prove to the host that you are indeed the original owner of that said digital asset, then the host should take proper action by removing the unauthorized sales from the marketplace.
One very good example is the case of Sad Frogs District NFT project.
Sad Frogs District is an NFT project consisting of 7,000 program generated NFTs worth more than $4 million and most of them draw inspiration from the popular Pepe The Frog meme.
Source: Twitter
Matt Furie, the creator of Pepe The Frog requested that the Sad Frogs District NFT project to be removed from Opensea for copyright infringement.
This action is in-line with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), where a takedown occurs when a copyright owner asserts that their content is being used online without their permission and requests its removal to forego further legal action.
For more information on what you can do to protect your NFT or any form of Intellectual Property you might own, kindly feel free to get in touch with us.
We’d love to help.