BYU COPYRIGHT AND TRADEMARK SYMPOSIUM ISSUE OF THE AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW ASSOCIATION QUARTERLY JOURNAL, 47 AIPLA 219, 2019.
About the Article
Cryptokitties, Cryptography, and Copyright is a featured work from the Brigham Young University 2018 Copyright and Trademark Symposium, titled Emerging Issues in the Digital Age.
This Article examines the copyright implications of unique, scarce digital creative assets transferred and stored on blockchains, which this Article refers to herein generally as unique crypto assets (UCAs). Specifically, this Article explores the emergence of non-fungible cryptographic tokens (NFTs) created based on the ERC=721 smart contract standard and recorded on the Ethereum public, distributed ledger. This novel standard enables, for the first time, verifiable digital scarcity — an elusive technological characteristic in the world of Web 2.0.