In what could be the most important litigation in the NFT space, Yuga Labs sued Ryder Ripps for trademark infringement last Friday. There is a fast-emerging history concerning the dispute between Ryder Ripps and the founders of the Bored Ape NFT collection and the Bored Ape Yacht Club. First, Some Background Ther is a fast-evolving background that we will try to document in the future. For n...

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) are becoming popular as the NFT market continues to expand. A DAO is a Community Run Democratized Organization Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are community-based organizations with a common purpose where each DAO member participates in decisions. A DAO is different than other legal organization types since there is no CEO, board of ...

Trademark Collateral Security Agreements Registered or pending trademarks ( intellectual property) can be used as a form of collateral to secure a loan from a financier. By definition, a security interest is a property interest created by agreement between parties or by operation of law over assets in order to secure the performance of an obligation.  This typically arises in the context of a cr...

An Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) (also known as a Fair Use Policy) is a set of rules applied by the owner, creator or administrator of a network, website, or service that restricts the ways in which the network, website, or service may be used and sets guidelines as to how it should be used.  Similar to a Terms of Use Agreement, AUPs are legal documents that help protect organizations from users t...

There are new domain extensions in Web3, including .crypto, .eth, and .nft.   What happens when someone registers your trademark or personal name on these web3 extensions?  There are two videos in this web3 domain squatting educational series. Both videos are linked in the description below for easy navigation and reference.  Watch video one below. This is a 'one of kind' video ser...

This is a story of an NFT project which got off to a great start but was built on a weak foundation by the game and NFT company Animoca Brands, blockchain game company which brands itself as "Driving digital property rights via NFTs and gaming to build the open metaverse." F1 Delta Time lost its trademark license to use F1 / Formula One as part of the F1 Delta Time game. The brand licensing de...

In this video, Blockchain attorney Enrico Schaefer identifies key legal issues every brand, marketing agency, or project point person needs to be thinking about before launching an NFT project for a company. Are major brands are dropping NFTs? The answer might surprise you. Most of the major brands in the world have either dropped an NFT, are experimenting with NFTs or have an NFT project on the ...

My name is NFT lawyer Enrico Schaefer. I am an attorney specializing in blockchain technology. Today, we're going to talk about non-fungible tokens (NFTs). We will look at two popular NFT offerings, the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Crypto Punks. Both NFT drops have been unexpectedly and amazingly successful. But the companies behind these NFT projects failed to account for several critical legal issues ...