THELOGICALINDIAN - International IP laws accept been invoked to shut bottomward a cryptocurrency
The Estate of J.R.R. Tolkien, columnist of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, has auspiciously won the bookish acreage case it had filed adjoin the developer of the JRR Token cryptocurrency. As a result, the Estate has won buying of the project’s area name and the developer will be appropriate to annul anarchic content.
Tolkien Estate Wins IP Case
The Estate of J.R.R. Tolkien has won its bookish acreage altercation adjoin the developer of the JRR Token cryptocurrency, whom it accused of brand infringement.
The JRR Token ($JRR) was launched in August of this year; the day afterwards its launch, the Estate filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The activity was accused of brand contravention for advisedly assuming the appearance and actuality of Tolkien’s work; an archetype is that one of the token’s stated aims was to “organize the bodies appear a accepted ambition of authoritative JRR Token ‘The One Token That Rules Them All’”—phrasing absolutely agnate to the acclaimed band from The Lord of The Rings, “One arena to aphorism them all.”
The developer responded that the activity was advised to be a apology rather than an act of bad acceptance and that the acronym “JRR” stood for “Journey through Risk to Reward” instead of John Ronald Reuel. Ultimately, the WIPO begin that altercation to be unpersuasive.
The Estate’s attorneys additionally accused the U.S. developer, who had to pay “significant” acknowledged costs as a aftereffect of the ruling, of designing the jrrtoken.com website in a ambiguous way that ability advance bodies to anticipate that it was accurately affiliated with the columnist or franchise. The Estate has historically been rather litigious and careful of its trademarks from perceived infringement; the Estate solicitor, Steven Maier, additionally said that it was “continually ecology action in the cryptocurrency and NFT” spaces for such instances.
As a aftereffect of the decision, the Tolkien Estate has recovered the area name JRRToken.com, the activity can no best accomplish beneath that name, and the developer is appropriate to annul all anarchic content. However, at the time of writing, the badge itself still appeared on Binance Smart Chain’s BSCScan, with 516 holders and a bazaar cap of $0.
The activity has NFTs on OpenSea associated with it as well, and while these were not included in the case brought to WIPO, this acceptable has to do with the actuality that they were minted afterwards the Estate filed its complaint. While abounding of these NFTs accept been beatific to bake addresses, others are still endemic by alive addresses.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the columnist of this allotment endemic BTC, ETH, and several added cryptocurrencies.
