How are we different from other NFT galleries?
We always act in accordance with applicable law ensuring for example the copyrights. For the start – we have a contract with the creator of the underlying work or with their legal successors. This is the only way we can guarantee the clear rights of the seller and the buyer of the NFT. All artworks you find at SOPRG are legally protected, so there are no situations where you come across a “new” original electronic NFT of the same image on the internet, for example. Paintings / NFTs sold/bought from us are always rare originals directly from the authors or persons with the appropriate rights.
What is the an NFT from a legal point of view?
An NFT is a digital token created on a public blockchain that can be considered an intangible thing in the legal sense, an irreplaceable thing that cannot be confused with anything.
This tool allows us to own an object – an original in a digital environment. At the same time, ownership is written indelibly to the blockchain until you sell or otherwise transfer the NFT itself to someone else.
However, this does not mean that the owner of the NFT is automatically the owner of the artwork transferred to the NFT. By transferring that work to the digital world in the form of the NFT, the creator of a work of art in the real world does not automatically lose his or her copyright, whether personal or proprietary, in the underlying work of art. This does not mean that the owner of the NFT could primarily reproduce the work and further deal with these reproductions (sell, rent, lend or exhibit).
The NFT and the underlying copyrighted work are essentially two different things, with ownership of the NFT not creating rights in the underlying work unless the owner of the NFT agrees otherwise with the author of the underlying work. However, we do not have such a clear situation here regarding the rights of the author of the work in the NFT or the underlying work, whoever the owner is, especially concerning further reproduction of the work (making other NFTs, etc.).