Someone's "selling" colors as NFTs

I used to work for an IP law firm (as a staff member). One of their clients was Tiffany’s. Tiffany’s had trademarked the robin’s egg blue that they use for all of their packaging. Every time someone used that color (or probably one close to that) they’d receive a cease and desist letter from this law firm.

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sure jan

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This actually does a good job highlighting some of the (additional) absurdity here: Unless the implementers really shrink the color space or shills buy up huge swaths of the gamut, if someone owns, say, #000000, the simple solution is just to use #000001 to avoid the fee.

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Similar to the tax company H&R Block with their trademarked shade of green.

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Recursive rentiers.

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“Who’s the greater fool now, huh?”

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What am i offered for this slick palindromic prime?: 123575321 It’s barely been used and can be yours for any established fungible currency valued at a starting bid of: £17471.00

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When you trademark something like that, it’s supposed to only prevent others from using it in a context where it might create consumer confusion. In other words, another tax preparation company can’t use H&R Block’s shade of green in their logo. It doesn’t mean a restaurant can’t use it. Of course, that won’t stop @ahherbst’s former law firm from sending a cease and desist letter to the restaurant, who may comply rather than go to the expense of fighting it, but trademark protection is supposed to be somewhat limited. If someone trademarks a color, they do not “own” that color.

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Indeed. In the Tiffany’s example they’d have grounds to go after people who make boxes or bags in that color, or certain luxury items, but not plumbing gasket for example.

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Which is why I described it as bullshit built on bullshit built on bullshit.

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Oh, absolutely. But the technical concept of designing an NFT exchange that enforces surcharges based on color NFT “ownership” is absolutely implementable. And also bullshit.

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Also you are unlikely to successfully enforce such a trademark claim if there are examples of “prior art” showing the color in question being used that way. So if some other luxury goods company had already been making packaging in that Robin’s Egg Blue before Tiffany’s asserted trademark rights then those Cease & Desist letters wouldn’t mean squat, legally speaking.

Asserting ownership of a specific hexadecimal color is stupid for too many reasons to even get into.

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Funny about that:

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Mostly true, although it’s not referred to as “prior art” in trademarks. That’s strictly a patent law term.

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By doing this, they claim, the owner of each color will somehow get paid a royalty every time that color is used in someone else’s NFT avatar.

The NFT grifters, who already ignore copyright law, are now going to start paying other NFT grifters for the right to use a color? Mwa ha ha ha ha! Yeah, sure! And I also have an NFT bridge to sell them (@NukeML is developing it for me for a small fee).

I’m so glad I watched those videos this morning so I can understand the depth of the scam going on with all this.

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It would be funny If someone sell vantablack nfts.

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im thinking of making nfts out of everyone’s boing boing avatars so that everytime someone @ s they ( and their heirs, in perpetuity ) get 1 milllion dollars.

all i need are a few investors…

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Farts. Thats the place to go with all this insane NFT nonsense. A prelude to all this stupid shit.

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Wasn’t there already some lite-porn chick who sold her farts so hard that she landed herself in the ER with her literally shitty diet?

There’s no humor anymore. Just horror.

I hope people start making nfts of their individual tissue cells soon. Like make NFTs of every tissue cell, then enter a surgical arena and the buyers can compete to claim them in an epic game of “operation.”

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I believe they’re open that it would only work this way on their platform. The platform’s set up such that it’s just how the system works. People “buy” colors; when you sell art with them, the system automatically distributes royalties to the color “owners” based on your color usage. The “rights” are just the function of code - any legal rights are only (falsely) implied. (But the whole crypto/NFT movement is premised on not needing the state and its laws to enforce property rights - the “rights” are encoded in the system, supposedly. Ultimately it’s total bullshit, but it’s the whole point.)

They’re counting on getting an initial rush of users who are hoping to be the “owners” of colors they can rent out, who will pay them for millions of colors. Which may be true, but it seems unlikely anyone would want to then join to actually make art and be the color serfs in this NFT kingdom. (Though I guess I shouldn’t discount the psychology of people joining obvious pyramid schemes late in the hopes that somehow they’ll make some money too, but the system seems set up to create two very unequal tiers of users - color owners and art makers.)

I’m waiting for someone to do NFTs of NFT marketplaces. Hell, they probably already have…

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