Maria Samartseva, a Counsel & Head of IP litigation practice at Rybalkin, Gortsunyan, Dyakin and Partners (RGD), held a webinar “Immersion in NFT” dedicated to NFT in art for representatives of museums and art community.

The technologies of non-fungible tokens (NFT) are used in various fields. On the webinar, Maria talked about application of NFT in art world with focus on legal aspects of deals related to issue and purchase and sale of NFT works of art. The speaker explained the peculiarities of NFT placement and turnover on different marketplaces, perspectives of creation of a Russian marketplace for NFT art, the key NFT formats. She shared the latest trends, the most remarkable cases, and the first court precedents in UK and China related to NFT art.

Besides, Maria analysed in detail the Hermitage case from the legal standpoint and assessed legal risks of the project paying attention to possible contractual schemes as well as book keeping and tax accounting. In the absence of regulation, the importance of KYC (know your client) procedure to minimize risks of deals with NFT is growing as well as the correct use of contracts to regulate the scope of rights oт NFT objects from its creation to involvement into turnover.

The online event was held in open format and brought together the representatives of the leading Russian museums and members of the art market. After the presentation, guests asked questions to the presenter and discussed the most controversial points.

The information on RGD’s forthcoming events is available in the Events section of our website.