The luxury brand’s lawsuit over non-fungible tokens heralds important questions for brand owners and artists over their IP rights in the metaverse, Joseph Barber of Howard & Howard Attorneys explains.
In January luxury French fashion house Hermès sued a digital artist for copying its Birkin handbag through the issuance of MetaBirkin non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
For those not aware of the filing or related media attention, the artist, Mason Rothschild, created fuzzy images of the Hermès Birkin handbag and minted them as NFTs.
NFTs are digital records of data stored on a blockchain and uniquely identifiable. NFTs are associated with a larger digital file that is itself too large to store in a blockchain. The digital record can then be traded or sold as an asset identifying the NFT owner as the true owner of the original digital file.
Hermès, NFTs, metaverse, brand owners, fashion, blockchain, IP rights, technology, copyright, trademark infringement, Quentin Tarantino