If you’re interested in non-fungible tokens, you certainly know about the intellectual property issues that can arise when NFTs are traded.
Many projects don’t have licensing arrangements in place, and it’s often unclear who owns the rights in the underlying assets.
Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, founded by Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, tried to solve the problem this year, which is why both founders made the list.
The company launched six free ‘Can’t Be Evil’ copyright licences for NFTs in August. These licences were drafted to help token creators protect or release their IP rights and give NFT holders a baseline of clear, irrevocable and enforceable rights.
The agreements set out who owned the rights, whether the creator retained exploitation rights and whether rights could be terminated on the basis of hate speech.
It’s still unclear how widely these will be adopted, but they at least set a standard and provide insight to creators and purchasers – particularly those who aren’t as familiar with IP issues.
