Proper legislation is necessary to resolve legal disputes related to trademarks, patents, and intellectual property in the metaverse, according to experts.
Businesses should ensure their trademarks are protected in the new virtual world and make sure unique assets are also safeguarded. The National cited a senior prosecution official speaking at the 12th Regional Intellectual Property Crime Conference for the Middle East and North Africa region.
According to Ali bin Khatam, senior advocate general at Dubai Public Prosecution, protecting intellectual property in the metaverse is a complex legal issue.
“The metaverse raises questions such as who is protecting the trademarks in virtual reality and if companies need to register their trademarks in the metaverse. We must have legislation and solutions to these issues.”
Not having proper legislation could give rise to people copying a trademark from the real world and pasting it in the metaverse. Yet implementing the proper regulatory framework to fix such a weakness may be difficult, Khatam explained.
“The most difficult situation is if there is a trademark in a certain virtual reality and someone copies it in another virtual reality, we must have legislation and protection for this issue,” said Khatam.
Protecting intellectual property in the metaverse
As virtual worlds and metaverses continue to gain popularity, concerns around intellectual property rights and plagiarism are also growing. However, the lack of clear laws makes it challenging to enforce any sort of punishment for those who engage in such activities.
“The applicability and sufficiency of existing intellectual property laws are being tested as we speak in the metaverse. Heavyweight companies such as Walmart, Hermès, Nike and Roblox are all actively seeking judicial determinations as to their respective trademark rights in the metaverse,” wrote Charles Lew, an LA attorney and entrepreneur.
Intellectual property is not the only sector experiencing unease about the relevance of “real world” laws to the rapidly expanding virtual one, stated Lew.
As the metaverse expands, it becomes increasingly vital for lawmakers to address the legal issues that arise within it, especially to protect real-world rights in VR.
The fact that the UK police recorded child abuse in the metaverse earlier this week shows that the framework is an immediately needed thing for the virtual world.
A person’s actions within the metaverse can be recorded and stored for later use, as reported by Metanews. In just a few minutes, millions of data points are created; when analyzed using AI, an individual can be identified as distinctly as their fingerprint.
Wakweli’s efforts to combat NFT scams
In the metaverse, NFTs have the potential to be used as a form of virtual currency and to grant ownership rights over digital assets. However, fake spam and plagiarized NFTs are hitting the marketplaces. NFT marketplace OpenSea said last January that 80% of items created with its minting tool were plagiarized and spam.
This reality has given rise to projects like Wakweli, which issues certificates of authenticity for NFTs.
“We need more trust right now: morale is low due to last year’s scandals, and millions were lost to NFT scammers,” said Antoine Sarraute, Co-founder of Wakweli.
“Centralized verification shows its limits and fails to turn the tide. With Wakweli, we developed the definitive solution to protect users: we empower and reward the community for finding and reporting fake data in a system where everyone protects each other, making it impossible to run scams.”
As NFTs continue to grow in the metaverse, solutions like Wakweli’s certification of authenticity will be crucial in maintaining trust and preventing fraudulent activity.
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