Pretend you own a box of toys that contains:
- A baseball
- An Etch-A-Sketch®
- A Barbie® doll
- Some Lego® bricks
- A jump rope
I decide I want some of your toys. We write up a contract that says I get the baseball, the jump rope, the Barbie doll, and the Lego bricks. The contract says you get to keep the Etch-A-Sketch.
Many years later, we realize there was also a baseball mitt in the toy box that neither of us knew was there.
Who owns the baseball mitt? Me or you?
That’s what’s happening in the dispute between Miramax and Quentin Tarantino. They have a contract that says which Pulp Fiction stuff Tarantino kept and which he transferred to Miramax. Tarantino’s now selling NFTs relating to Pulp Fiction. The contract didn’t say anything about NFTs because NFTs didn’t exist.
Who gets the NFT rights?
It depends how you look at it.
Miramax says NFT rights are like copyright and the copyrights were transferred to Miramax, so Miramax owns the right to create and sell NFTs.
Toy box translation: The contract says Miramax got the baseball, so surely the mitt goes with it.
Tarantino says anything not specifically mentioned to be transferred stays with him.
Toy box translation: The contract didn’t say anything about a mitt, so it belongs to Tarantino.
This isn’t the first time this issue is being raised and it won’t be the last. How do you think the issue should be resolved?
Shout out to Cassandra G. for yet another great question.
Featured image credit: © 2019 NFT MCH+ used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license via Wikimedia Commons.