This CLE course will guide IP counsel on copyright issues related to non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The panel will examine ownership, digital exhaustion, resale, and collective rights management. The panel will offer best practices for ownership and resale of NFTs and addressing infringement issues.
NFTs created headlines worldwide when a digital artwork by Beeple in the form of an NFT was sold for $69 million. The NBA Top Shot shop sold over $230 million worth of videos in the format of Top Shot NFTs. NFTs allow for the sale of limited editions of art from images to videos to music and permit sports teams, game developers, and other content owners to create unique digital assets that become collectibles. However, this market raises many issues about what "ownership" of an NFT means.
Copyright law is critical to the NFT evolving marketplace as NFTs are usually associated with images, videos, music, and other content. However, NFTs do not easily fit into the form of traditional copyright ownership. This has implications for the transfer of copyright ownership.
The seller of an NFT may not be the copyright owner of a work attached to an NFT. The purchase of an NFT may give the purchaser a quasi-ownership interest in a set of information connected to the content. Absent stipulations in the transaction, the purchaser of an NFT only gets a right over the metadata pointer to the digital object. The purchaser does not receive ownership or exclusive rights on the work or copy.
Listen as our authoritative panel of IP attorneys examines copyright issues related to NFTs. The panel will discuss ownership, digital exhaustion, resale, and collective rights management. The panel will offer best practices for ownership and resale of NFTs and addressing infringement issues.
