Navigating NFT Ownership and Copyright

Olta Andoni, fintech and IP Attorney at Zlatkin Wong and adjunct professor at Chicago Kent College of Law, Tonya Evans, visiting Full Professor of Law at Penn State Dickinson Law School and host of the podcast Tech Intersect, and Stuart Levi, co-head of the Intellectual Property and Technology practice at Skadden Arps and coordinator of the firm's Blockchain and Digital Asset practice, break down the legal issues surrounding NFTs. In this episode, they discuss:

• how the law looks at non-fungible tokens (1:25)
• why owning an NFT is different from owning the rights to the underlying asset making up the NFT (3:12)
• problems that blockchain solves for creators  (5:09)
• how corporations (aka content intermediaries) are handling NFTs (6:53)
• what rights the purchase of an NFT gives a buyer (11:51)
• derivative artwork, the fair use copyright law, moral rights, and how U.S. law views NFTs (15:53)
• how to determine the jurisdiction of an NFT (25:00)
• what type of legal recourse is available to artists whose art has been stolen and redistributed as an NFT (32:37)
• the differences in the terms of services between NFT marketplaces  (36:26)
• why the first sale doctrine may not apply to digital assets (43:16)
• what a buyer is getting when purchasing a blockchain license (46:12)
• how NFT creators should protect their work (51:43)
• whether a fractionalized NFT is a security (55:25)
• how NFTs will change the business of content creation (58:44)

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Episode Links

People

Tonya Evans

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/IPProfEvans
• Penn State Dickinson Law: https://dickinsonlaw.psu.edu/tonya-m-evans 
• Relevant content:
• • https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-intersect-59-ping-prof-2-non-fungible-tokens-nfts/id1493143898?i=1000512485580
  • https://clarivate.com/darts-ip/blog/copyright-blockchain/ 
  • https://clarivate.com/darts-ip/blog/intro-to-ip-and-blockchain/ 

Olta Andoni

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/AndoniOlta?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
• Zlatkin Wong: https://zlatkinwong.com/en/ 
• Relevant content:
• • https://www.coindesk.com/stop-tokenizing-art-you-dont-own 

Stuart Levi

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartlevi/
• Skadden: https://www.skadden.com/ 
• Relevant content: 
• • https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/fin-tech/799182/emerging-discovery-issues-in-blockchain-litigation 

Legal Links

• Fair Use Doctrine:
• • https://pitt.libguides.com/copyright/fairuse#:~:text=The%20doctrine%20of%20Fair%20Use,teaching%2C%20scholarship%2C%20and%20research.
• First Sale Doctrine:
• • https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1854-copyright-infringement-first-sale-doctrine#:~:text=The%20first%20sale%20doctrine%2C%20codified,interests%20of%20the%20copyright%20owner
• Moral Rights:
• • https://www.copyright.gov/policy/moralrights/
• Digital Millennium Copyright Act
• • https://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf 
• Visual Artists Rights Act
• • http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/martin/art_law/esworthy.htm 

Miscellaneous Links

• Banksy
• • https://www.cbsnews.com/news/banksy-nft-injective-destroy-art-digital-token/
• Fractionalized NFTs
• • https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/sec-crypto-mom-hester-peirce-selling-nft-fragments-illegal-2021-3-1030250153
• Dapper Labs License
• • https://medium.com/dapperlabs/nft-license-2-0-why-a-nft-can-do-what-mickey-mouse-never-could-27673d5f29aa 
• TechnoLlama Blog

https://www.technollama.co.uk/can-copyright-teach-us-anything-about-nfts

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