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The Intellectual Property StrategistFeaturesIntellectual PropertyLitigationTechnology Media and Telecom

The World of NFTs and Their Implications In Intellectual Property Law

By Christine K. Au-Yeung
May 01, 2021

NFTs have been all the rage in the world. Mike Winkelmann, a digital artist known professionally as Beeple, sold a collage of his digital images for a record-breaking $69 million. About two weeks later, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's first tweet ("just setting up my twttr") sold for $2.9 million. Sports icons like LeBron James and Tom Brady have leapt into this market, with a video clip of less than a minute showing James dunking a basketball having been sold for over $200,000. And now, in what many are calling a "social media experiment" that could inspire an episode in the dystopian sci-fi television series Black Mirror, one can buy and sell tokens based on speculating in celebrities' reputations on BitClout, a social cryptocurrency exchange platform.

So what exactly are NFTs, and how do they reconcile with the basic tenets of intellectual property law?

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