Manchester United and Tezos foundation has been called out for copyright violation on the club’s latest NFT release. The statement revealed that the design traits of Lucréce’s work were copied by the premier league club.
Lucréce is a Norwegian-born, Vietnamese artist who’s also the NFT creator of Monster. He has built a huge profile on the Tezos blockchain as well as on OpenSea, an NFT marketplace.
Manchester United announced its NFT project alongside Tezos blockchain in November. However, the said NFTs of 7,777 collections, bear semblance with Monster by Lucréce.
Lucréce explained on his Twitter handle that while he got several DMs after the release of the NFTs by Manchester United, he has no affiliation with the club. He also admitted that there were similarities. “Definitely some resemblance there. Would’ve been a fun collab!”, he said.
We will resolve the issue with Manchester United
Responding to the alleged infringement, the artist tweeted that he was in talks with Arthur, the co-founder of Tezos to resolve the matter. A few hours after his tweet about having conversations with Arthur, he added that correspondence between himself and the club had started.
Concerns around NFT copyright have been part of this year’s discussion on the development of non-fungibles. In September, A16z proposed a new NFT license based on CC0 where anyone is permitted to use certain works in any way and without restrictions. There are no updates on whether it has been implemented yet.
In another update from the NFT community, OpenSea and Magic Eden highlighted adjustments on royalty fees for NFTs. OpenSea planned to implement Operator Filter, an on-chain tool that was meant to blacklist marketplaces that didn’t support royalties, on November 8, 2022. However, backlash from the community forced the team to change its plan.
Also, Magic Eden in September announced that it will allow traders to implement or ignore royalties for NFTs. The announcement, like that of OpenSea, was not fully accepted. In the course of discussing with its community, they reviewed the decision and while the optional system remains, it launched a $1 million Creator Monetization Hackathon for developers to create better NFT monetization tools.
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