Legal developments concerning blockchain and digital assets are not limited to the English-speaking world or to common-law jurisdictions. Earlier this year brought some thought-provoking developments on digital assets and related technologies from Spanish-speaking civil law jurisdictions. These include a ruling from a Barcelona court on the intersection of intellectual property rights with NFT and metaverse applications, and a new law in Mexico recognizing the use of online, smart-contract-based alternative dispute resolution systems.
Infringing Physical Original Works Through Digital and Virtual Versions?
In January, the Ninth Commercial Court (Juzgado de lo Mercantil No. 9) in Barcelona, Spain, issued a novel ruling in the case of Visual Entidad de Gestión de Artistas Plásticos v. Punto Fa, Resolución No. 11/2024 (Spain, Barcelona Comm. Ct. No. 9, Jan. 11, 2024), where use of copyrighted artworks in NFTs and in a metaverse were challenged as unlawful infringements but were upheld as amounting to a permissible “fair use.”
