NFT (non-fungible tokens) terimi, misli olmayan kripto varlıkları ifade etmek için kullanılmaktadır. Son günlerde bir yatırım aracı olarak oldukça yaygın hale gelen NFT’leri kripto paralar olarak da bilinen “fungible tokens” yani misli kripto varlıklardan ayıran yönü biri diğerinin yerine geçmeyen, eşsiz kripto varlıklar olmalarıdır. Her ikisinin ortak noktası ise blokzincir teknoloji altyapısını kullanması ve transferlerinin ağ üzerinden akıllı sözleşmeler vasıtasıyla gerçekleştirilmesidir. NFT’ler için bu durum Ethereum ERC 721 standardı ile mümkün hale gelmiştir. Her ne kadar dijitalleştirilebilen her şeyden NFT meydana getirmek mümkün olsa da bu teknoloji özellikle dijital eserler için yeni bir mecra sunmaktadır. Eserlerin yaygın bir şekilde NFT meydan getirmede kullanılması ise teknolojinin fikri mülkiyet hukuku ile kesiştiği ve hukukçular tarafından da değerlendirilmesi gereken yeni bir alan ortaya çıkarmıştır. Bu çalışma, Türk fikri haklar hukuku açısından söz konusu alana ilişkin değerlendirmeler içermektedir.
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are one of the technological innovations that provide convenience for every human being, especially in the context of business and economic opportunities. Features such as anonymity, decentralization, and its online scope are undeniably a double-edged knife phenomenon. On the one hand, it makes things easier, but on the other hand, it has the potential to become a platform for criminal acts such as money laundering, personal data violations, and copyright plagiarism. So that the urgency of special regulations should be considered, but with a progressive nature and paradigm so that NFT innovation does not die just because the law does not adjust to the times. Progressive law is a solution and answer to the phenomena that occur, where the legal paradigm and its enforcement must be in accordance with the moral system, the times, and the values that live in society to achieve substantive justice. Practical breakthroughs such as utilizing the latest technology can be developed to assist the law enforcement process in cyberspace.
The importance of legal protection and ensuring the prevention of criminal offenses related to the use of cryptocurrency was noted. The history of legal regulation of the use of cryptocurrency in Ukraine is briefly analyzed. An analysis of the Law of Ukraine "On Virtual Assets" was carried out and some of its shortcomings were identified. Cryptocurrency is proposed to be considered one of the types of virtual assets, namely digital currency (electronic funds), the emission and accounting of which is based on asymmetric encryption, the use of cryptographic protection methods. It is indicated that activities to prevent crimes related to the use of cryptocurrency should be extremely diverse, taking into account the fact that violations of the circulation of cryptocurrency will eventually penetrate into all major spheres of public life, and will require adequate measures. The concept and main types of general social principles for the prevention of offenses related to the use of cryptocurrency in Ukraine are defined. It is indicated that such preventive activity is a humane means of maintaining the country's security and law and order. These include verification of state regulation of the virtual assets market, control over the activities of participants in the virtual assets market, identification of criminogenic factors in legal entities where offenses related to the use of cryptocurrency are most often committed; development of rules for the use of cryptocurrency typical for all participants of the virtual assets market and others. The implementation of general social principles for the prevention of offenses related to the use of cryptocurrency in Ukraine, along with the protection of society from these offenses, protects offenders from committing more serious offenses, and thus saves them from severe criminal punishment. Special criminological measures to prevent crimes related to the use of cryptocurrency are analyzed. It is emphasized that such measures involve the creation of an optimal system for detecting the facts of these offenses and identifying persons who commit such actions. For this, it is necessary to reach a situation where the maximum possible number of sources of information regarding offenses related to the use of cryptocurrency will function. Individual approaches to the prevention of offenses related to the use of cryptocurrency involve the work of authorized bodies with individual individuals. Forms of individual prevention include studying the identity of potential offenders, interviewing individuals, surveillance and other measures. An important measure of individual prevention of offenses related to the use of cryptocurrency is the creation of a data bank on persons who have committed offenses in the specified or related areas.
With the development of blockchain technology and digital assets, the problem pages of digital assets at the legal level are becoming more and more prominent. This article will start with smart contracts and combine the case of Shenzhen Ethereum to analyze the legal issues based on blockchain technology and digital assets. The current status of conservation and its possible future development directions are analyzed. This article will specifically discuss the issue of contract law regulation of smart contracts from the perspective of legal system construction, as well as the compatibility between smart contracts and current contract law. Finally, the following conclusions are drawn: Firstly, consciously accepting the law needs to adapt to social changes and accepting the fact that the law needs to be adjusted. Secondly, at the operational level, the use of technology must comply with. Thirdly, at the research level, relevant legal research must be done, and legal scholars must have inter-professional knowledge and capabilities.
An intersemiotic translation is any form of translation that involves at least two different semiotic codes; for example, the translation from words to images, to numerical code, or to non-verbal sounds. One of the most widespread examples of intersemiotic translation in the contemporary world is transposing natural language into machine language in digital environments. In this case, if the source text is a legal text, we encounter a particular type of intersemiotic translation, namely an intersemiotic legal translation in a digital environment. This paper will focus on the intersemiotic legal translation of contracts in digital environments, and is divided into two parts. In the first part (Section Ways of intersemiotically translating a contract using digital tools), we will analyze four possible uses of the intersemiotic translation of contracts in a digital context. In particular, we will highlight the technical characteristics of intersemiotic translation, its limitations, and its potential in different phases of contract management, namely the drafting of the document, the agreement, the archiving of the document, and the execution of contractual clauses. We will examine different digital tools that exploit intersemiotic translation, such as contract drafting tools and online platforms that allow for the conclusion of electronic contracts, document archiving in blockchains, and building smart contracts. When analyzing these uses of intersemiotic translation in the digital environment, we will highlight four types of output that can represent the product of intersemiotic translation in the digital environment: epistemic effects, legal effects, digital effects, and economic effects. In the second part (Section A tool for translating the contract intersemiotically), we will describe a hypothetical prototype that, in light of the four potential uses of intersemiotic translation, could represent a support tool to simplify the communication between professionals and clients through the drafting of legal documents with the aid of dynamic forms and, eventually, with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). Beyond facilitating the dialogue between legal professionals and their clients, we use interfaces to allow clients to create their own drafts of their documents and the lawyer to work on the drafts drawn up by the customer, correct them, and structure them in order to guarantee the validity of the document. The system can also be designed to archive legal documents and private deeds securely and entrust them to a professional by using blockchain technology and automating the execution of some contractual clauses via smart contract protocols.
U ovom radu pratimo položaj umetnosti, umetnika i umetničkog dela s obzirom na uslove u kojima umetničko delo nastaje, u okruženju u kome vladaju kapital odnosi i visoko tehnološko okruženje koje ih prati. Prelaskom sa analognih na digitalne formate otvorene su nove perspektive za umetničko stvaralaštvo i distribuciju umetničkog dela, ali i probleme vezane za zaštitu autorskih prava i pravične monetizacije umetničkog dela. Pojavom blockchain tehnologije, posebno Ethereum blockchain platforme sa tehnologijom otvorenog koda i pametnim ugovorima omogućena je efikasnija komunikacija, distribucija i monetizacija umetničkog dela. Fokus ovoga rada posebno sužavamo na pojavu NFT nerazmenljivih tokena (Non Fungible Tokens) koji mogu biti nosioci vrednosti umetničkog dela. Oni omogućavaju da se održi unikatnost dela kroz kontrolisanu oskudicu. Predstavićemo standard ERC-721 koji omogućava kreiranje NFT-a, kao i prvih pet vodećih platformi za plasman NFT tokena na blokčejnu kroz odabrane primere.
Complex socio-economic processes are simultaneously taking place in Russian society: the economy is adapting to external economic challenges and, due to the COVID-19 epidemic, many aspects of social life are being transferred online. As a result, there is a transformation of all types of entrepreneurial activity, oriented both to the end consumer and to another legal entity (B2B transactions). The digitalization of commerce objectively requires an effective legal response to the procedures for concluding and executing contracts. A feature of the Russian legal system for regulating digital assets can be considered the impossibility of concluding direct transactions, bypassing a specialized information platform.
 The article discusses the features of smart contracts as a civil law way of disposing of digital rights. The activity of an information platform operator or a market maker as an intermediary is analyzed. Their positive and negative impact on the digital asset market is shown.
 The conclusion is substantiated that the disposal of digital rights through the use of a smart contract cannot be identified with all other classical contractual structures. Smart contracts, including those that are made using blockchain and Ethereum technology, are legally different from the electronic form of a civil law contract. Despite the obvious advantages of a smart contract as a way to manage digital assets, in the absence of legal regulation, significant business risks arise that require a prompt and effective legislative solution
The article attempts to evaluate the possibilities of using blockchain and smart contract technologies, as well as big data and artificial intelligence technologies in traditional commercial contracts. In addition, the author illustrates the legal risks of using information technologies and the limits of their implementation in the field of contract law. The goal chosen by the author predetermined the use of the formal legal method in the analysis of the current legal norms. At the same time, it is impossible to imagine the search for answers to the questions without referring to the comparative legal method: in the article, the author refers to the views of English and American scholars when considering the problems of using artificial intelligence technology in commercial contracts. As a result of the research, the author comes to the conclusion that firstly smart contracts designed for automatic transactions on the Internet do not allow moving real goods in the real world, therefore the scope of their use is only limited to the conclusion, but not to the execution of contracts of sale. Secondly, a smart contract can completely supplant traditional contracts and obligations in mediation contracts aimed at performing only legal actions. Thirdly, there is a problem of ensuring the right to privacy when using big data, therefore, the commercial use of the collected data, though does improve sales, violates basic human rights. And finally, the mastered capabilities for automating the processes of selecting counterparties, determining and changing storage conditions, tracking the balance of goods in the warehouse, etc., allow author to discuss the potentially great possibilities of using AI in commerce.
When we talk about blockchain and smart contracts, it is necessary to consider the parties participating in them, their rights and obligations, as well as the prerequisites for concluding a smart contract, namely, offer and acceptance. We also have to understand how it is used in different fields of law. As we are aware, blockchain is considered as the fourth generation industrial revolution. Its creation is related to a person named Sabo, it is still unknown who he was – it means that we do not have exact information, whether it was one person who created blockchain – part of the fourth industrial revolution or a group of people. At the same time, let's define the meaning of the contract in general, we can formulate the definition of the agreement (contract) as follows, the agreement (contract) is a deal concluded by two parties, which must have legal consequences, i.e. the parties participating in it have rights and obligations. It should also be noted, that thousands of years have passed since the first contracts were signed, however, the most significant change in the development of contracts occurred during the last century. The article will discuss all the issues and problems that are very important in relation to this topic. The role of offer and acceptance in blockchain and smart contracts and how it differs from the usual standard contract will be described, we will also talk about the parties of the smart contract and how we can use it in different fields of law.
The article analyzes the problems and threats associated with the use of the latest information technologies for criminal purposes, as well as the use of cryptocurrencies in the process of legalizing proceeds from crime to finance terrorism and extremism
In recent years, cryptocurrencies' economic application and speculative value have soared. Cryptocurrency is being used as a means of trade, even in Pakistan. The government does not legalize it, but it is traded like many other states. Globally it causes fraudulent investment schemes. Cryptocurrencies are speculative, as the dot-com boom of the 1990s. Even though these organizations lacked a product, business plan, and profit potential, the stock market was eager to invest heavily in internet-related companies. A few years later, a dot-com catastrophe ended an era of unjustified and speculative online firms. The gold rush occurred much earlier. In the 1800s, people worldwide sought their fortune in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. They rapidly understood that mining a significant gold stake was dangerous and unlikely to succeed. In 2021, cryptocurrencies will become the dominant form of money. 2021 was the landmark year. Bitcoin became the new gold rush and caused online fraud, known as cryptocurrency fraud. We will examine cryptocurrency, crimes, laws, and regulations to combat crypto crimes.
The article presents the authors’ view on the ongoing changes in the process of resolving new “digital” disputes. The authors assess the global practice of resolving digital disputes through arbitration, as well as the new form of digital rights protection - blockchain arbitration. They analyze regulation of the new procedure for the protection of digital rights in foreign practice. The authors believe that the developed foreign experience in resolving smart contracts is progressive and effective. The findings of the research can be outlined as follows: 1) for the first time, special rules for resolving digital disputes have been formulated; they have been developed in tight cooperation of lawyers and IT specialists; 2) disputes from smart contracts and blockchain were isolated into a separate form of rights protection; 3) special approaches to settling digital disputes at the stage of concluding smart contracts have been worked out; 4) the process of enhancing the procedure for resolving digital disputes is ongoing.
The current hype cycle surrounding non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, has been going on for close to two years. As we continue to move through this phase and into whatever is next, it is important to look at the current use cases out there and some of the intellectual property issues facing companies that avail themselves of this technology. What follows are excerpts from my contributions to a discussion panel that took place in November 2021, modified as necessary for clarity and for the purposes of this Article. 
 The first question one might ask is, “Why are companies choosing to enter into the NFT space in the first place?”
María del Carmen Alvarado Bayo, Daniela Supo Calderón
El rápido desarrollo del metaverso y los componentes que lo integran trae consigo una gran cantidad de desafíos y oportunidades que abarcan un sinfín de aspectos. Sin embargo, existe un campo que posee una especial intersección con la nueva forma de interacción que propone el metaverso. Nos referimos a aquella propiedad que es valiosa tanto física como virtualmente: la propiedad intelectual. Específicamente, dentro del campo de la propiedad intelectual, nos referiremos al rol que juegan las marcas en el metavarso y en los denominados Non-fungibles tokens (NFTs), considerando -particularmente- los desafíos y oportunidades que se presentan ante esta nueva realidad virtual.
In this research, we discuss the smart contracts, legal acts, Block Chain rules and their scope, the legal problems that they arise, and how the theory of contracts has been developed accordingly. At the current time, the smart contracts, specially those relating to Block chain rules and cryptocurrency trading, are creating a radical transformation where the conventional language has fallen back and a new and unique phenomenon, known as the language of codes, has emerged. Thus, the digital relationships performed within smart contracts raise several questions. Hence, the question arises here: to what extent these contracts need a specific legislation to address all the problems that they pose?
Digital art is the result of creative activity practiced in the virtual space. There is no unified concept of digital art in Russia, and there is no legislative consolidation of this term. In this regard, attempts to find an answer to what digital art is and what rights its acquirer has are topical issues of Russian legal science. At the same time, under the influence of technology, as a result of the development of the blockchain, new ways of handling digital art objects have appeared. The appearance of non-fungible tokens (NFT) causes a lot of legal problems. The study of these problems is the most important task for modern lawyers. The purpose of the study is to identify the legal qualification of digital art objects. In this regard, the author sets the task to study the structure of NFT as an object of civil law. The purpose of the article is also to identify potential risks for intellectual property rights holders when issuing NFT. The methodology of this research is based on the use of a set of general scientific methods and specific methods of analysis used in legal science: system-structural method, system-functional, induction and deduction, analogy, method of formal logic and system approach. In particular, the dialectical method provides an opportunity to systematically explore the unity of social content and legal form of art objects in the digital space. The formal legal method makes it possible to form legal categories by highlighting the main features of phenomena related to research questions. The author has made assumptions about the legal nature of digital art and NFT, as well as their place in the system of intellectual property law. The author has come to the conclusion that crypto art is one of the types of digital art. A specific feature of cryptographic art objects is that their emergence and existence is possible only in blockchain. As a result of the conducted research, it has been revealed that not all NFTs connected to art objects are crypto-art objects in digital commerce.
The development of modern technologies has led to the creation of a new way to conclude agreements through automated systems — smart contracts, the emergence of which was largely due to the development of distributed ledger technology (Blockchain). The advantage of the system of “smart contracts” is the ability to make transactions directly with counterparties, without resorting to the services of banks, payment system operators and other transaction operators, which, in turn, reduces costs. Smart contracts can also be used during remote electronic voting, allowing you to solve problems related to security, reliability of data and their protection. Many states have managed to assess the advantages of this technology, having decided to implement it in the digital economy. But before implementing the achievements of scientific and technological progress, it is necessary to understand their technical and legal nature in order to form proper legislation regulating their application. Within the framework of this work, the technical and legal features of smart contract technology are considered in comparison with the traditional form of concluding contracts, and it is also proposed to use it in economic turnover within a special platform.
As the golden rule of resolving the conflict between intellectual property and right in rem of the same object, exhaustion of rights aims to avoid the influence of exercising intellectual property right on right in rem. The academic circle is unable to come to any agreement concerning the discussion of extending the rule of exhaustion of rights to the regulation of utilizing works in digital conditions. The blockchain technology and market have a transformative impact on the copyrights in the digital environment. NFT and the mode of NET of digital works have reshaped the traditional ecology of online works transmission and utilization, offering opportunities for the exhaustion of rights to be applied in the network environment. Hence, it is the right moment to create the digital environment to apply the exhaustion of copyrights.
The problem of legal regulation of cross-border private law relations in the field of intellectual property implemented through blockchain technologies requires thorough scrutiny on behalf of both legal theorists and practitioners. The use of blockchain technologies is relevant for both copyright and industrial property issues. A practical method to establish a technological basis for the protection of intellectual property rights that is used for their storing and for other purposes provides for implementation of so-called blockchain ledgers. At the same time, the main function of blockchain ledgers is to protect the rights of copyright holders and to provide them with an opportunity to use results of their intellectual activity simultaneously in several jurisdictions. In this respect, the use of distributed ledger technologies should be regulated by a system of rules established by the participants of legal relations within the framework of implementation of certain cross-border private law relations. This article considers, inter alia , lex registrum as a system of rules regulating relations under consideration.
Smart contracts continue to formulate the backbone of blockchain transactions. After the foundation of the Ethereum protocol, the Initial Coin Offerings, Security Token Offerings, and Non-Fungible Tokens have all relied on smart contracts, with enormous market volume. The broad scope of smart contracts’ (potential) application is undisputed, yet many countries have been silent on the regulation of smart contracts. These same countries, however, have already set some standards regarding crypto assets and crypto asset service providers. We can include Switzerland and the European Union, that has already prepared a draft Regulation for Markets in Crypto Assets, in this first group. Some jurisdictions, such as the UK and the US, have already concluded that common law principles suffice to tackle with smart contracts. The third group, including Italy, has defined smart contracts but has no comprehensive regulatory framework. There is a final group of countries that have chosen not to regulate any aspects of the distributed ledger technology (yet). It is without a doubt that the use of smart contracts will cause problems regarding formation, contract performance, applicable law, jurisdiction, protection of consumers, and personal data.
Los NFT están superando a la cadena de bloques y a las criptomonedas en popularidad. Se trata de certificados de propiedad almacenados en una cadena de bloques y respaldados por la tecnología blockchain (p. ej., Ethereum) que suelen estar asociados a un activo digital, como las artes visuales, los vídeos, la música o los objetos de colección. Los NFT parecen estar llamados a jugar un papel clave en el denominado metaverso, un entorno digital que opera en la cadena de bloques, donde tecnologías como la realidad virtual y la realidad aumentada actúan como proveedores de componentes visuales, y que ofrece oportunidades de negocio e interacción social ilimitadas. El arte es solo una parte del mundo virtual basado en blockchain donde los avatares, la tierra, los edificios, los nombres, etc., se pueden vender y comprar como NFT. Este fenómeno crea obviamente una serie de implicaciones legales novedosas. La creación, la distribución, la propiedad y el comercio de los NFT son fenómenos nuevos que plantean multitud de cuestiones jurídicas, muchas de las cuales son ambiguas o no están resueltas. En este contexto, el presente trabajo analiza la competencia judicial internacional en controversias relativas a tokens no fungibles, con especial atención al Derecho europeo, haciendo asimismo referencia a la jurisprudencia reciente de terceros Estados en materia de criptoactivos.
Michele Soavi, Nicola Zeni, John Mylopoulos, Luisa Mich
Abstract The opportunity to automate and monitor the execution of legal contracts is gaining increasing interest in Business and Academia, thanks to the advent of smart contracts, blockchain technologies, and the Internet of Things. A critical issue in developing smart contract systems is the formalization of legal contracts, which are traditionally expressed in natural language with all the pitfalls that this entails. This paper presents a systematic literature review of papers for the main steps related to the transformation of a legal contract expressed in natural language into a formal specification. Key research studies have been identified, classified, and analyzed according to a four-step transformation process: (a) structural and semantic annotation to identify legal concepts in text, (b) identification of relationships among concepts, (c) contract domain modeling, and (d) generation of a formal specification. Each one of these steps poses serious research challenges that have been the subject of research for decades. The systematic review offers an overview of the most relevant research efforts undertaken to address each step and identifies promising approaches, best practices, and existing gaps in the literature.