NFTs, DIGITAL WORLDS AND BRAND PROTECTION IN FASHION: AN UK/ EUROPEAN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Two years into the metaverse utopia and with the promising launches of metaverse Fashion Weeks for two years in a row, the creative industries have not yet lost their enthusiasm for experimenting with digital worlds. In practice, brand owners ‘mint’ non-fungible tokens,or NFTs, associated with their real-world or purely digitalassetsthat most commonly enjoy intellectual property (IP) protections, such asfashion designs. Those can be sold at dedicated NFT marketplaces, but are often interoperable, or capable of being used across a number of different digital worlds. This articleendeavours to shed light into the following key question: to what extent intellectual property rights vested into real-world creations can be transposed into the digital and by extension, whether the legal protection offered can be given its full effect in a digital unregulated space, where users’ identities are anonymous or pseudonymous. By weighing the expected benefits and losses from a UK & EU intellectual property perspective, the authorquestions: Are NFTs and the metaverse more than a gimmick? And hence, is the metaverse a market worth investing for fashion brands? The articlefirst exploresthe metaverse for fashion, as well as designers’ andbrands’ activity in this novel market space, followed by an in-depth discussion on the intellectual property question posed.