photo: Victoria Borodinova, pixabay
The worldwide known film director, Quentin Tarantino, has announced his intention to release NFTs, based on his acclaimed film, Pulp Fiction (1994).
In short, NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are defined as new digital assets, powered by Blockchain technology, in which all the transactions are recorded. In other words, NFTs contain data stored in the form of artistic works, that can be traded on the blockchain. More information can be found here: https://ati.ec.europa.eu/news/non-fungible-token.
While Tarantino’s fans celebrated this announcement, Miramax studios, which owns the intellectual property rights on the film, sent him a cease-and-desist letter to cancel the sale, to no avail.
Consequently, a lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against Tarantino, denouncing him for trade mark and copyright infringement, as well as breach-of-contract. Miramax argues that Tarantino did not inform them of his intention to issue NFTs, motivating that their lawsuit is necessary to enforce and protect their intellectual property rights on the Pulp Fiction movie.
From his side, Tarantino argues that NFTs didn’t exist in the 90s, when the film was produced, and that therefore, this specific type of exploitation was not foreseen in his contract with Miramax. Furthermore, the director retained some reserved rights to the film, including amongst others “print publication (including, without limitation, screenplay publication, ‘making of’ books, comic books and novelization, in audio and electronic formats as well, as applicable), interactive media, theatrical and television sequel and remake rights, and television series and spinoff rights.”
For this reason, the director considers that the “print publication” clause allows him to scan and produce the NFTs from his handwritten script, which, according to him, was in any case produced before the contract with Miramax.
The auction has been released for 7 digital copies of his handwritten screenplay of the movie, which will include unedited movie scenes and comments from the director. Fans will have access to bid with Ethereum cryptocurrency in order to purchase the NFTs.
What is interesting about Tarantino’s NFTs is that they will include the so-called “Secret NFTs”, which differ from traditional NFT assets in some aspects, since the transactions are recorded on a secret blockchain and include public and private metadata. It is a way to make privacy possible, since private ownership is foreseen and allows the content creator to control who has full access to their content. This new concept of secret content differs from blockchain principles, according to which the identity of the owner is usually accessible and the ownership information and transactions are public.
This court dispute makes evident the fact that the existing IPR framework, as well as the standard contractual clauses that have been in use over the past decades, are not always well-suited to new forms of digital works such as NFTs. Here, there is no clear answer as to who owns the rights to exploit the Pulp Fiction screenplay in this new form – yet the outcome of this dispute is likely to be financially substantial for the winning party.
If you are seeking additional information about Tarantino’s NFTs, you can visit https://tarantinonfts.com .