Intellectual Property on the Blockchain: The Five Most Important Cryptocurrency and NFT Decisions Since 2020 — and Recommendations for Florida Brands, Creators and Technology Companies

When the non-fungible token market exploded in 2021, the conventional wisdom in some corners of the crypto community was that the blockchain had made intellectual property law obsolete. Ownership was whatever the smart contract said it was, a token minted to a public ledger could not be infringing because it was “just code”, and a digital image attached to a token was art, immune from the trademark laws under the First Amendment. Five years later, a body of federal decisions has emphatically rejected each of those propositions. NFTs are goods under the Lanham Act. A token that trades on a famous brand’s name can be infringing, dilutive and cybersquatting, and can be enjoined. A token that purports to convey a copyrighted work conveys nothing unless the seller owns the copyright. And a patent that simply records an old process on a distributed ledger is not an invention.

This post describes in detail the five decisions since 2020 that, in our judgment, have done the most to define how intellectual property law applies to cryptocurrency, blockchain and NFT projects, and then sets out recommendations for Florida brand owners, content creators and technology companies that are building, minting, licensing or enforcing in this space. Because Miami has become one of the country’s leading centers for digital-asset businesses, these decisions have particular practical importance for our clients.

For an overview of our related practices, see Trademark Matters, Copyright Matters, Patent Matters and Technology & Start-Up Services.

The Five Decisions:

1. Hermès International v. Rothschild, 603 F. Supp. 3d 98 (S.D.N.Y. 2022) — the MetaBirkins verdict: NFTs that trade on a famous mark are not immune from the Lanham Act as “art”

The first NFT trademark case to reach a jury remains the most influential. In late 2021, digital artist Mason Rothschild began selling “MetaBirkins”—a collection of 100 NFTs depicting fur-covered versions of Hermès’s iconic Birkin handbag—through the domain metabirkins.com and on the OpenSea marketplace. The collection generated more than $1 million in sales and resales. Hermès, which holds registered trademarks in BIRKIN and trade dress rights in the bag’s design, sued in the Southern District of New York in January 2022 for trademark infringement, dilution and cybersquatting. Rothschild moved to dismiss on the ground that the NFTs were expressive works of art protected by the First Amendment under the Second Circuit’s Rogers v. Grimaldi test, which shields the use of a mark in an artistic work unless the use has no artistic relevance or explicitly misleads as to source.

Judge Jed S. Rakoff denied the motion in May 2022, holding that although Rogers might apply to the images, Hermès had plausibly alleged that the MetaBirkins name and images were explicitly misleading as to source or sponsorship. He denied cross-motions for summary judgment in December 2022, finding disputed questions of fact regarding Rothschild’s intent, and the case proceeded to a nine-day trial. On February 8, 2023, the jury found Rothschild liable on all three claims—infringement, dilution and cybersquatting—and awarded Hermès $133,000 ($110,000 for infringement and dilution and $23,000 for cybersquatting). Critically, the jury was instructed on the Rogers framework and nonetheless found that Rothschild had intentionally designed the project to mislead consumers into believing Hermès was affiliated with it—a finding supported by evidence that included his own messages describing the project as a way to capitalize on the Birkin name. On June 23, 2023, the court entered a permanent injunction barring Rothschild from marketing or selling MetaBirkins NFTs, using the MetaBirkins name, and promoting the project, and ordering him to transfer the metabirkins.com domain and disgorge post-verdict proceeds. Rothschild appealed to the Second Circuit (No. 23-1081). The appeal has been fully briefed since late 2024, and as of this writing we have not located a decision.

Why it matters. Hermès established, at the trial level, that the NFT wrapper does not change the analysis. A project that appropriates a famous mark and trades on its goodwill in the digital marketplace is subject to the same infringement, dilution and cybersquatting claims that would apply to a physical knock-off. The verdict predated the Supreme Court’s decision in Jack Daniel’s Properties, Inc. v. VIP Products LLC, 599 U.S. 140 (2023), which held that Rogers does not apply at all when the defendant uses the mark as a source identifier for its own goods. Under Jack Daniel’s, a plaintiff in Hermès’s position today would likely not even have to overcome the Rogers threshold. The Second Circuit’s eventual ruling will be important for the interaction between Rogers, Jack Daniel’s and digital art, but the practical lesson has already been absorbed by the market: brand names are not free raw material for NFT collections.

2. Yuga Labs, Inc. v. Ripps, 144 F.4th 1137 (9th Cir. 2025) — NFTs are “goods” under the Lanham Act, and copying a collection’s marks is not protected parody

Yuga Labs created the Bored Ape Yacht Club, the most commercially successful NFT collection in history, and used marks including BORED APE YACHT CLUB, BAYC and the ape-skull logo to identify it. Conceptual artist Ryder Ripps and his collaborator Jeremy Cahen, claiming that the Bored Ape artwork contained hidden racist imagery, launched the “RR/BAYC” collection — NFTs pointing to the identical ape images, sold under names and logos that copied Yuga’s — and, by their account, sold them as a form of protest and “appropriation art.” Yuga sued in the Central District of California for false designation of origin and cybersquatting; it did not assert copyright, which raised questions about whether it owned registrable copyright in the images at all. The district court granted summary judgment to Yuga in April 2023, rejected the defendants’ First Amendment, fair use and nominative-use defenses, and after a bench trial on remedies awarded roughly $1.6 million in disgorgement and statutory damages, an injunction, and subsequently a substantial attorney’s fee award.

On July 23, 2025, the Ninth Circuit issued the first federal appellate decision squarely addressing NFTs as trademark subject matter. In an opinion by Judge Forrest, the court held that NFTs are “goods” for purposes of the Lanham Act: the Act’s scope extends to intangible goods, and NFTs are not merely a delivery mechanism but products in their own right, marketed, purchased and resold under source-identifying marks.

The court also held that Yuga’s marks were valid and that Yuga had priority notwithstanding the defendants’ argument that Yuga had abandoned the marks by conveying broad rights to token holders, and it rejected the argument that Yuga’s use was unlawful (and therefore could not support trademark rights) because the NFTs were allegedly unregistered securities. Applying Jack Daniel’s, the court held that Rogers did not apply because the defendants used Yuga’s marks as source identifiers for their own NFTs, and that nominative fair use failed because the defendants used more of the marks than necessary and in a manner suggesting affiliation. The court also affirmed the dismissal of the defendants’ counterclaims. However, the Ninth Circuit reversed the summary judgment of liability. Likelihood of confusion, it held, is a fact-intensive inquiry, and the record—which included evidence that RR/BAYC was marketed as a commentary on Yuga and sold at a fraction of the price of authentic Bored Apes—presented a genuine dispute that a jury must resolve. The court likewise reversed the cybersquatting judgment, which depended on the same confusion finding, vacated the damages and remanded for trial.

Why it matters. Yuga Labs answers the threshold question that hung over every NFT trademark case: intangible tokens are goods, and unregistered marks used to sell them are protectable. It also confirms that, after Jack Daniel’s, a defendant who copies a collection’s name and logos to sell competing tokens cannot escape the ordinary confusion analysis by calling the project art or protest. At the same time, the reversal is a reminder that likelihood of confusion remains a jury question, and that a defendant’s expressive framing—while not a complete defense—is relevant evidence on confusion. The decision is binding in the Ninth Circuit only, but there is no comparable appellate authority elsewhere, and district courts in the Eleventh Circuit can be expected to follow it.

3. Nike, Inc. v. StockX LLC, No. 22-cv-983 (S.D.N.Y. 2023) — “Vault NFTs” tied to physical goods, the first-sale doctrine, and counterfeits in an authenticated marketplace

StockX operates a resale marketplace for sneakers and streetwear that promises buyers authenticated, genuine goods. In January 2022, it launched “Vault NFTs”—tokens, each depicting a specific pair of sneakers held in a StockX vault, that could be traded on the platform and redeemed for the physical shoes. The first collection consisted overwhelmingly of Nike models, and the tokens displayed Nike’s marks and shoe designs. Nike sued in February 2022 for trademark infringement, dilution and related claims, alleging that StockX was selling unauthorized digital products under Nike’s marks at prices far above the shoes themselves. StockX responded that the NFTs were nothing more than digital claim tickets for lawfully acquired goods, so that the first-sale doctrine—which permits the resale of genuine goods under their original marks—applied. In May 2022, after Nike purchased what it alleged were four pairs of counterfeit Nike shoes that StockX had certified as authentic, Nike amended its complaint to add counterfeiting and false advertising claims directed at StockX’s authentication promises.

The case did not produce an appellate decision, but it generated several rulings of lasting significance. Judge Caproni allowed the trademark claims to proceed past the pleading stage, declining to accept at the outset that a token that displays a mark and trades independently of the physical good is merely a receipt. In March 2025, the court granted partial summary judgment to Nike on the counterfeiting claim, holding that StockX’s sale of the counterfeit pairs—regardless of its authentication process—constituted use of counterfeit marks, and rejecting StockX’s position that its own diligence excused liability, the court left the NFT-specific claims, including the applicability of the first-sale doctrine to the tokens, for trial. Before trial, in late August 2025, the parties settled and the case was dismissed with prejudice on undisclosed terms.

Why it matters. Nike v. StockX frames the question that will govern the next generation of “phygital” products—NFTs, digital twins and tokenized receipts tied to physical goods. Whether a token that displays a brand’s marks and trades at its own price is a separate good, or merely a representation of a good the brand has already sold, was never finally decided, but the court’s refusal to dismiss and its summary-judgment ruling on counterfeiting tell brand owners and marketplaces alike that authentication promises are actionable, and that a marketplace that tokenizes another company’s products assumes real risk. The settlement leaves the first-sale question open for the next case.

4. Roc-A-Fella Records, Inc. v. Dash, No. 1:21-cv-05411-JPC (S.D.N.Y. 2022) — an NFT cannot convey a copyright the seller does not own

In June 2021, Damon Dash, a co-founder and one-third shareholder of Roc-A-Fella Records, arranged to auction, through an NFT platform, what was marketed as the copyright to Jay-Z’s 1996 debut album Reasonable Doubt, the label’s most valuable asset. Roc-A-Fella sued in the Southern District of New York, alleging that the copyright belonged to the corporation, not to any individual shareholder, and that Dash’s sale would constitute conversion, breach of fiduciary duty and unjust enrichment. On June 22, 2021, the court entered a temporary restraining order prohibiting Dash from selling or attempting to sell any interest in the album, including through an NFT, and later converted it to a preliminary injunction. Dash maintained that he intended to sell only his one-third interest in the company, not the copyright. In June 2022, the parties settled through a stipulated order confirming that Roc-A-Fella Records owns all rights in Reasonable Doubt, that Dash owns no individual interest in the copyright, that he may not sell or attempt to sell it, and that he retains his one-third equity interest in the company.

Why it matters. Roc-A-Fella is the clearest judicial articulation of the distinction between the token and the work. A blockchain entry can record whatever its creator writes into it, but it cannot create title to a copyright that the minter does not hold, and a court will enjoin the sale before it happens. The case also illustrates a governance risk that recurs in closely held creative companies: founders and shareholders sometimes believe they personally own the works the company created. The Copyright Act’s transfer requirements—a writing signed by the owner under 17 U.S.C. § 204(a)—apply to transfers made through smart contracts exactly as they apply to transfers made on paper.

5. Rady v. Boston Consulting Group, Inc., No. 2022-2218 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 27, 2024) — recording a known process on a blockchain does not make it patent-eligible

Max Rady owned U.S. Patent No. 10,469,250, directed to a method of authenticating physical items such as gemstones by scanning them to capture unique physical signatures—spatial and spectral patterns—and recording those signatures on a blockchain so that the item could later be verified against the immutable record. He sued Boston Consulting Group and its affiliate over a diamond-tracking platform. The Southern District of New York dismissed the complaint under 35 U.S.C. § 101, holding that the claims were directed to the abstract idea of authenticating an item by its unique characteristics and recording the result, and that the recitation of blockchain technology added nothing inventive. In a nonprecedential opinion issued March 27, 2024, the Federal Circuit affirmed. Applying the two-step Alice framework, the court agreed that the claims recited the long-known practice of identifying and cataloguing an item’s distinguishing features, and that the additional elements—a scanner, a computer and a blockchain—were generic technologies used for their conventional purposes. The patent did not claim any improvement to blockchain technology itself, to scanning technology, or to the way the data was structured. It simply applied existing tools to a familiar problem.

Why it matters. Rady is the leading appellate statement that “on a blockchain” is the modern equivalent of “on a computer” for eligibility purposes. Companies that have built their patent strategy around tokenizing or ledgering existing processes—supply-chain tracking, provenance, ticketing, royalty distribution—should expect § 101 challenges, and should draft claims that recite a specific technical improvement: a novel consensus mechanism, a new data structure, a particular method of reducing on-chain storage or gas costs, or a specific cryptographic technique. The decision is consistent with the Federal Circuit’s broader treatment of fintech patents and should be read alongside the USPTO’s 2024 guidance on eligibility for software and AI inventions.

Other Decisions Worth Noting

Several other cases fill in the picture. In Free Holdings, Inc. v. McCoy, No. 22-cv-881 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 17, 2023), the court dismissed claims by a party who had re-minted a token on the Namecoin blockchain in the slot once occupied by Kevin McCoy’s Quantum—widely described as the first NFT ever created—and asserted that it, rather than McCoy, owned the work Sotheby’s had sold for $1.47 million, the court held that acquiring an abandoned ledger entry conferred no rights in the artwork, and the Second Circuit affirmed in 2024. In Miramax, LLC v. Tarantino, No. 2:21-cv-08979-FMO-JC (C.D. Cal. 2021), the studio sued the director over plans to sell NFTs of handwritten Pulp Fiction script pages, raising the question whether reserved “screenplay publication” rights in a decades-old agreement encompass tokenized excerpts. The case settled in 2022 without a decision, but it remains the template for every dispute over whether legacy contracts allocate NFT rights. The March 2024 joint report of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the U.S. Copyright Office to Congress on non-fungible tokens concluded that existing intellectual property law is generally adequate to address NFTs and that new legislation is not presently needed — a conclusion the decisions above bear out.

Recommendations for Florida Brand Owners, Creators and Technology Companies

The decisions above converge on a single principle: the ordinary rules of intellectual property apply to digital assets, and the parties that succeed are those that prepared as if they would. The following recommendations reflect that principle.

1. Register your marks for digital goods and services before you launch — and before someone else does

Yuga Labs protected unregistered marks, but only after years of litigation over validity, priority and abandonment. Registration eliminates most of those arguments. The Nice Classification now expressly covers “downloadable digital files authenticated by non-fungible tokens” in Class 9, and NFT-related services typically fall in Class 35 (online marketplaces), Class 41 (entertainment and virtual-goods services) and Class 42 (blockchain and software services). Brand owners that have no present plan to enter the digital-asset market should nonetheless consider a defensive filing, or at least a monitoring program, so that a MetaBirkins-style project cannot establish a foothold.

Our Trademark Matters page describes the clearance and registration process.

2. Confirm you own the copyright before you mint — and paper the chain of title

Roc-A-Fella and Free Holdings both turned on the difference between owning a token and owning a work. Before any NFT project launches, confirm through written agreements that the minting entity holds the copyright in the underlying artwork, music or video, including works commissioned from outside artists (which are not works made for hire absent a signed writing and a qualifying category), works created by founders before the company was formed, and works that incorporate third-party or generative-AI elements. Register the copyrights; registration is a prerequisite to suit and to statutory damages, and it is inexpensive relative to the value at stake.

3. Write the license into the project, not just the smart contract

What a token holder receives—a personal display license, a commercial license capped at a revenue figure, an assignment of copyright in the specific image, or nothing beyond the token—should be stated in a written license that the holder accepts, published at the point of mint and referenced in the token’s metadata. The license should address resale (whether rights transfer with the token), derivative works, use of the project’s marks by holders, royalties on secondary sales, and what happens if the linked file disappears. Broad grants to holders can create the abandonment and naked-licensing arguments raised against Yuga; grants that are too narrow undercut the value proposition.

Our Copyright Matters page addresses licensing structures.

4. Audit legacy contracts for digital-asset rights

Miramax v. Tarantino shows that agreements written before NFTs existed will be read to allocate NFT rights one way or the other. Publishers, labels, studios, licensors and licensees should review existing grants for reserved rights, “all media now known or hereafter devised” clauses, and merchandising and publication provisions, and should address digital assets explicitly in every new agreement.

5. Do not rely on artistic or parodic framing to excuse use of a brand’s marks

After Jack Daniel’s, Hermès and Yuga Labs, a project that uses another company’s name or logo to identify its own tokens will be judged under the ordinary likelihood-of-confusion test, and evidence of an intent to trade on the brand is often decisive. Genuine commentary is still protected, but the safer course is to comment on a brand without using its marks as the name of what you are selling.

6. Monitor marketplaces and use platform takedown procedures

OpenSea, Blur, Magic Eden and the other major marketplaces maintain notice-and-takedown procedures for both copyright (under the DMCA) and trademark complaints, and most will delist collections that copy registered marks or artwork. A monitoring program for NFT marketplaces, blockchain domain registries (.eth, .crypto) and social channels should be part of every brand’s enforcement calendar, with demands sent promptly and litigation reserved for projects that generate significant revenue or refuse to comply.

See Litigation & Enforcement.

7. Register the domain names — including blockchain domains

The cybersquatting verdicts in Hermès and, before reversal, Yuga Labs were based on conventional domain names (metabirkins.com, rrbayc.com). Blockchain-based naming systems fall outside the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act and the UDRP, and cannot be transferred by a registrar. Brands should defensively register their names on the principal blockchain naming services and should include those names in their monitoring program.

Our Domain Name & Websites page discusses domain enforcement.

8. Draft blockchain patents to a technical improvement

Rady means that claims to “do X, and record it on a blockchain” will not survive § 101. Companies whose innovation lies in how the ledger works — consensus, sharding, zero-knowledge proofs, cross-chain bridges, gas-efficient contract architectures — should describe the technical problem and the specific solution in the specification and claim it with particularity; companies whose innovation lies in a business process should consider trade secret protection instead.

See Patent Matters and Trade Secret Matters.

9. Recognize that smart-contract code is protectable — and public

Contract code deployed to a public blockchain is visible to everyone and is routinely forked. Copyright protects the code as a literary work and registration should be considered for significant contracts, but public deployment forecloses trade secret protection for the on-chain code itself. Off-chain components — matching engines, risk models, key-management systems, proprietary data — can and should be protected as trade secrets under the DTSA and Florida’s Uniform Trade Secrets Act, with the documented measures those statutes require.

10. Expect consumer-protection and regulatory exposure alongside the IP claims

Nike v. StockX was a false-advertising case as much as a trademark case, and the marketing claims made for a token — authenticity, scarcity, rarity, expected returns, guaranteed royalties — are actionable under the Lanham Act and the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. Florida-based projects should review every representation in their launch materials, roadmap and social media for substantiation, and should coordinate intellectual property counsel with securities and money-transmission advice, since the same token can raise issues under all three.

Our FDUTPA page addresses the consumer-protection overlay.

Conclusion

The blockchain did not rewrite intellectual property law; it produced a new set of goods and a new marketplace to which the old law applies. Hermès and Yuga Labs confirm that NFTs are goods and that brand names cannot be appropriated for them under the banner of art. Nike v. StockX shows that tokens tied to physical products raise unresolved first-sale questions but very real counterfeiting and false-advertising exposure. Roc-A-Fella and Free Holdings confirm that a token conveys no copyright its minter does not own. And Rady confirms that recording an old process on a ledger is not an invention.

For Florida companies operating in one of the country’s most active digital-asset markets, the path is clear: register the marks, confirm and register the copyrights, write the licenses, draft the patents to a technical improvement, protect the off-chain secrets, and monitor and enforce as if the tokens were the products they are.

If your company is launching a digital-asset project, has discovered that its marks or works are being used in one, or needs its agreements and patent strategy reviewed in light of these decisions, please visit our Trademark Matters, Copyright Matters and Technology & Start-Up Services pages, or contact us at 305-374-8303.