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ARTICLE · 11 SEPTEMBER 2022

Market Intelligence Thought Leadership Award Winner

Cant Be Evil? Considering Creative Commons NFT Licenses

Piper Alderman
Piper Alderman
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Piper Alderman

Piper Alderman

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'Can't Be Evil' licenses explicitly outline the buyer's rights regarding the artwork for their NFTs.

AustraliaIntellectual Property
Michael Bacina
Michael Bacina
Steven Pettigrove
Steven Pettigrove
Jordan Markezic
Jordan Markezic
Luke Misthos
Luke Misthos
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Michael Bacina and Jordan Markezic of the Piper Alderman Blockchain group provide insight and commentary to the novel NFT creative commons licenses.

The rise in popularity of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has seen these "very expensive JPEGS" rise in popularity around profile picture (PFP) NFTs including Cryptopunks and the Bored Ape Yacht Club, shifting more recently to more mainstreaming of NFTs with images embedded in tickets planned by Ticketmaster, and brands like the NBA, AFL and Formula 1 issuing NFTs to fans.

With very low barriers to entry, early PFP project creators could simply hire an artist (which often occurred via Upwork), create art linked in the metadata to the NFTs being minted, and sell them. The tokens themselves contained in many cases no reference to any rights to use the images linked in the tokens and there has been legal uncertainty as to just what NFT holders were buying.

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