INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY LAW
Court of Rome: unlawful use of trademark for NFT sale.
In one of the first rulings by an Italian court on trademarks and NFTs, the Court of Rome upheld the precautionary appeal of Juventus Football Club S.p.A. ordering the blocking of the unauthorized production and sale of NFTs reproducing the Juve trademarks, which are also protected in the world of virtual gaming, metaverse and on Blockchain.
The company Blockeras S.r.l. had produced and marketed some NFTs reproducing the image of soccer player Vieri wearing the Juventus jersey. The NFTs reproduced both word marks and design (the Juventus striped jersey) of the football club: all protected IP assets for the protection of which Juventus Football Club S.p.A. has precisely appealed.
The decision is among the first in which an Italian court has ruled on trademark protection in the metaverse. Among other things, the Roman court found periculum in mora mainly in the fact that these NFTs continued to be resold on the various marketplaces and on the not easy future quantification of the damage.
But the precautionary order by which the court inhibited the further production and marketing of the intangible goods associated with NFTs (certifying their rights) and ordered to withdraw from the market and remove from each website NFTs and the digital content associated with them very unlikely to find proper enforcement, because of the way technology works. In fact, withdrawing from the market digital products such as NFTs that by their nature and correlation with the blockchain appear to be ineradicable and viral in their transmission from one account to another (of which often only the fictional name associated with the wallet is known) appears impossible.
The company Blockeras S.r.l. had produced and marketed some NFTs reproducing the image of soccer player Vieri wearing the Juventus jersey. The NFTs reproduced both word marks and design (the Juventus striped jersey) of the football club: all protected IP assets for the protection of which Juventus Football Club S.p.A. has precisely appealed.
The decision is among the first in which an Italian court has ruled on trademark protection in the metaverse. Among other things, the Roman court found periculum in mora mainly in the fact that these NFTs continued to be resold on the various marketplaces and on the not easy future quantification of the damage.
But the precautionary order by which the court inhibited the further production and marketing of the intangible goods associated with NFTs (certifying their rights) and ordered to withdraw from the market and remove from each website NFTs and the digital content associated with them very unlikely to find proper enforcement, because of the way technology works. In fact, withdrawing from the market digital products such as NFTs that by their nature and correlation with the blockchain appear to be ineradicable and viral in their transmission from one account to another (of which often only the fictional name associated with the wallet is known) appears impossible.
