Maria Samartseva, a Сounsel & Head of IP litigation practice at Rybalkin, Gortsunyan & Partners (RGP) took part in the online conference NFT for brands.

The conference brought together key representatives of the NFT market: digital artists, owners of the largest NFT marketplaces, businessmen and brands which had already launched successfully their NFT projects or plan to do that in the near future. In live discussion the participants discussed trends on the NFT market and studied Russian experience of collaboration with digital artists to develop simple and easy tools for NFT community and objects of digital art.

Maria participated in the conference as an invited expert on legal issues related to digital art, protection and registration of the copyright on NFT while collaborating with artists.

Maria Samartseva commented on the occasion: «Digital art and NFT is rapidly growing in Russia and around the globe. The regulation of relationships between digital artists and NFT marketplaces, collectors and buyers of digital art is a very actual topic that raises a lot of extraordinary questions to lawyers. Taken into account legal uncertainty in the transactions related to ownership on digital object it is necessary to use additional legal constructions such as contracts with a set of commitments and guarantees, independent guarantees as well as risk insurance. In addition, given the specificity of blockchain as a preventive measure it is also disirable to carry out the KYC procedure and deanonymization of the participants involved in such transactions».

Being in avant-garde of the Russian legal market, RGP closely monitors the NFT market development to provide clients with the up-to-date IP regulatory and strategy advice.