China’s first court ruling on NFT art theft holds marketplace accountable
- An NFTCN user listed an NFT using a cartoon picture created by artist Ma Qianli without permission, the plaintiff said
- The court decided that the platform failed to check whether the user who created the NFT was the rightful owner of the artwork
A court in China’s eastern city of Hangzhou handed down the country’s first landmark ruling on a case involving non-fungible tokens (NFTs), holding a marketplace accountable for allowing a user to create a token from stolen artwork.
The lawsuit was filed by Shenzhen-based company Qice against Hangzhou-based BigVerse, which operates the marketplace NFTCN.
An NFTCN user listed an NFT using a cartoon picture created by artist Ma Qianli, according to the plaintiff, which is the sole copyright owner of Ma’s works.
The artwork, showing a cartoon tiger receiving a vaccine shot, was sold by the unnamed user for 899 yuan (US$137), according to an article published by the Hangzhou Internet Court last week.
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The court decided that the platform failed to check whether the user who created the NFT was the rightful owner of the artwork, and therefore NFTCN was at fault for facilitating the infringement of the owner’s “right to disseminate works through information networks”.
