From digital works of art to accessories with which to dress up your avatars, passing through buildings (clearly virtual). Although no one knows how the metaverse will really evolve (or perhaps metaverses: in fact these realities develop on multiple platforms such as Roblox, The Sandbox, Meta, Decentraland), fashion and luxury brands are developing products and services to “colonize it. “. The first experiments have already begun: Gucci, after the creation of the virtual space Vault and various experiences on Roblox (including a digital version of the Dionysus bag sold for about $ 4,100), bought a space on The Sandbox; Philipp Plein has invested the equivalent of $ 1.4 million in real estate on Decentraland, while Nike – which created its Nikeland virtual world on Roblox – has acquired the RTFKT brand that makes NFT and augmented reality products. Together with the new projects, the first disputes arrived which, between real and virtual, bring out some completely new legal problems. Italian lawyers are also focusing on which.
The first disputes
For now concentrated in the US, the first appeals have developed around NFT (non fungible token), unique digital works, unchangeable and whose ownership is certified through the blockchain. And that can be sold for significant amounts.
The legal battle for now best known is that between Hermès and the artist Mason Rotschild, sued for copyright infringement for having created the Metabirkin Nft, 100 limited series models inspired by the famous bag (whose price starts at around 7 thousand euros) of the French brand, which, however, was unaware of the project. The artist appealed to the First Amendment (being, for him, a work of art like Andy Warhol’s “Campbell’s soup cans”) and now it is up to a New York judge.
Nft are still the casus belli between Nike and StockX, a reselling platform valued at 3.8 billion dollars, which according to the Portland giant’s lawyers, would have sold over 500 Nft of Nike shoes without authorization, damaging the brand.
Brand registration
«The metaverse is completely to be built – comments Maria Luigia Franceschelli, senior associate at Hogan Lovells with specializations in IP and Fashion Law – because, in fact, it is not known what the future use of an NFT created today will be. It may be that what today is a virtual work of art will one day be used by avatars, transforming itself into a marketable object ». According to Franceschelli, “fashion companies are beginning to deposit the brand in some particular categories, such as software, for defensive purposes”. And the proliferation of virtual projects could be linked to the fact that «the proof of the use of the trademark in a given class is assessed very severely. Registration alone is not enough ».