Commerce involving non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has reached historic milestones and is increasing by the day - artists, collectors, investors, and numerous other stakeholders are seeking to create, develop, commercialize and acquire content and assets through these evolving blockchain-based property interests.
Pryor Cashman remains at the forefront of this fast developing confluence of technology, content, and finance, and we are actively advancing the objective of clients to create, realize and protect value in this emerging space. Our attorneys have been lauded by international ranking agencies such as Chambers, Legal 500, and World Trademark Review for their innovation in law, and one of our attorneys was named to the inaugural list of National Law Journal’s “Cryptocurrency, Blockchain and FinTech Trailblazers” for his innovative work in blockchain and digital ledger creation.
Our group combines substantial blockchain and FinTech, intellectual property, and digital experience with deep industry knowledge in art, music, entertainment, and financial institutions (to name a few) to provide pragmatic and substantively integrated advice for NFT participants in myriad industries. This interdisciplinary approach enables us to provide contextualized counsel to capitalize on developments in this growing marketplace when it matters most- right now.
Whether it’s making sense of the underlying technology, understanding how to create an NFT asset, valuing and protecting IP assets, or clarifying the KYC/AML banking and money transmission issues that may arise in an increasingly anonymized digital marketplace, Pryor Cashman has you covered.
Recent experience includes our representations of:
- Aoki Industries, a company founded by an award-winning music industry superstar and producer DJ Steve Aoki, in the formation of a creative agency to represent content creators in the development, commercialization, and monetization of non-fungible token (NFT) projects.
- YMU Arts, a division of YMU Group, in the development of NFT collaborations with visual artists, including counseling on intellectual property matters.
- A leading platform that helps creators to construct licenses for the commercial use of their digital work (and creator of the first NFT), with several NFT-related projects, including:
- development of on-chain smart contracts (embedded in a JSON Web Token) and off-chain agreements setting forth the contractual rights associated with NFT transactions, including those involving art, video, and music elements, as well as rights to future music royalty income streams as part of NFTs, including in a manner that avoids categorization as a security; and
- negotiation of consignment terms for the sale of historic NFT through an international auction house.
- A digital artist in connection with an ongoing copyright infringement claim against a party that generated multi-million dollar revenue from a "drop" of an NFT series "inspired by" our client’s designs.
- A creative coordinator in the preparation of work-made-for-hire agreements for use with animators and other contributors of digital content commissioned for incorporation into digitized versions of estate and legacy works for tokenization.
- An art gallery in the negotiation of their exclusive agency role vis-a-vis represented artists seeking to develop, market, and offer NFTs through the gallery’s sales program.
- A YouTube star in the negotiation of a terms of license agreement to tokenize viral videos for monetization through a new NFT platform, as well as in revenue sharing arrangements with contributors.
- A photographer in the sales of photos that include various non-fungible token aspects in the agreement.
- Other celebrities, brands, and NFT creative agencies in various collaboration projects utilizing the NFT blockchain framework.
