The First NFT Legal Case In China

As of 2017, the mining, minting and trading of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is banned in China. In contrast, NFTs are heating up in China under the name of "digital collectibles" despite growing restrictions and a tough regulatory environment banning users from selling their digital assets for cash. Now, for the first time, a Chinese court has considered a case involving NFTs, with implications for copyright and platform liabilities.

Case Summary

An NFT (or "digital collectible") platform called Qice had acquired a worldwide exclusive copyright license for the popular "Fat Tiger" series of digital images. Qice then discovered that one or more NFTs based on the "Fat Tiger" series were available on another NFT platform, Bigverse. Bigverse enables the minting of NFTs by users, and the NFTs at issue here was created and posted by a Bigverse user, not Bigverse itself. Qice sued Bigverse (not the user) for infringing its licensed right of dissemination via the internet.