I have now uploaded my latest article on copyright and artificial intelligence to SSRN, and I’m looking for constructive feedback (the article can be found here or if SSRN isn’t working, here). I’ve entitled it “A Scanner Darkly: Copyright Infringement in Artificial Intelligence Inputs and Outputs” in part as a […]
Luxury brand Hermès has won a trademark jury trial in New York against artist Mason Rothschild. The dispute was over Rothschild’s NFT collection MetaBirkins, which are sold on the marketplace SuperRare, consisting of links to images of furry Birkin bags. The jury awarded Hermès $133,000 USD in damages for trademark […]
Courtesy of the Commercial Law Court in Barcelona (Juzgado de lo Mercantil), we are getting one of the very first rulings dealing with the interface between intellectual property, NFTs, and the metaverse (previous decisions have been about property itself). In other words, perfect Technollama territory (text of the decision here). […]
One of the few bragging rights that we have here at Llama Towers is that this blog has gained a reputation as a place where new legal issues get a discussion before they hit the academic mainstream. Virtual worlds, open source, software patents, cryptocurrencies, blockchains, AI, and NFTs, all have […]
Academia is often referred to as the ivory tower, the metaphorical space where people who think for a living exist, not preoccupied with the goings on of the people living below them; its inhabitants live to pursue intellectual ruminations. It is not supposed to be a nice metaphor, and it […]
I’ve been catching up with the ongoing case of Yuga Labs v Ryder Ripps. This case involves conceptual artist Ryder Ripps, and Yuga Labs, the makers of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection, which is still the most successful NFT project in the world. Ryder Ripps has been […]
There are few certain things in life. Death, taxes, the abuse/misuse of the trolley problem in AI. But one thing is also certain, digital assets are here to stay, and they will be a growing part of our daily lives. Even if you’re a crypto and metaverse sceptic such as […]
Last year I was talking to a student who was writing her dissertation on cryptocurrency and blockchains. She was extremely bright and well informed about the legal issues, and she was also an investor, which ignited her interest on the subject. Needless to say, she had completely bought in to […]
You wait months for an NFT case, and then two drop in the matter of days. First an English court confirmed that tokens are property (more on that when I get my hands on the decision), and now there is a fascinating copyright case taking place in Germany that could […]
I am a big believer in the power of stories. In 1993, journalist Julian Dibbell wrote an article for the Village Voice entitled “A Rape in Cyperspace“, in which he described a series of moderating decisions that were taken at an early virtual community called LambdaMOO. The online shenanigans are […]