I think one take away is that it’s likely that the WotC lawyers misunderstand what NFTs really are nearly as bad as the mtgDAO NFT bros misunderstand how IP laws work.
I don’t really blame the WotC lawyers, the entire NFT promoting world keys saying that you buy an NFT and ‘own’ the art it points to, even though there is no contract assigning any meaningful ownership rights in any way.
From the mtgDAO side I feel they have failed to even consider any meaningful challenge to their idea. They make some handwavy clams about how it won’t be copyright infringement, but that is the least of their worries in my not a lawyer opinion. They are attempting to build a business directly on top of another companies trademarks, and arguably doing it in a market that the trade mark owner already operates in. While there are exceptions for descriptive uses. (like Pepsi using the name Coke to say in a commercial that more people in taste tests like Pepsi better than Coke) My understanding is that the exception doesn’t apply if there is an implied endorsement (that doesn’t actually exist) or confusion about origin. Just starting out by calling their currency MTG, and claiming they will control the minting of all cards with MTG, when the abbreviation MTG is commonly known to refer to a WotC trademark and is used in that form on their own site leaves me expecting that they have a good claim that the group is trying to claim ownership of a WotC trademark. I don’t see how WotC could not be forced to challenge this, and have a good chance of winning.
