Published: 26.04.2022
Article reading time:
2 minutes.
For the first time, a Chinese court has sentenced an NFT platform, accusing it of creating and distributing someone else’s intellectual property.
A court in the Chinese city of Hangzhou found the BigVerse non-fungible token trading platform guilty, according to the South China Morning Post. The ruling came after Shenzhen-based Qice filed a lawsuit against NFTCN, the parent company of the BigVerse platform.
The lawsuit alleged that one of the site’s users stole a copyrighted work by Chinese artist Ma Qianli to resell it as an NFT. Based on the evidence, the court found the NFT platform guilty of not checking whether the user is the author of the work before creating the token. After the trial, the platform was charged with “facilitating the violation of intellectual property rights and distributing work known to be someone else’s.”
The work was an image of a cartoon tiger being vaccinated. NFT was sold for only $137 to an unknown user, but the court ordered BigVerse to pay Qice a $611 fine and stop distributing other people’s property.
Professional traders fear the aggressive policy of the Chinese authorities towards the NFT industry. In mid-April, three Chinese state associations proposed tightening regulation of the industry to prevent the risks of criminal financial activities.
China has a similar policy towards the metaverses: the Chinese Banking and Insurance Regulatory Committee (CBIRC) suspects that virtual universes are being used by scammers to steal users’ assets.
Source: Bits
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