The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed trademark complaints against OpenSea today, prompting the delisting of several offending tokens.
Offending NFTs are delisted by OpenSea
According to an RIAA letter, OpenSea’s marketplace includes several Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domains with names that refer to the recording industry and its members.
The offending ENS domain names have now been removed from OpenSea’s non-fungible token marketplace.
The sale of the offending domains, according to the RIAA, constitutes “dilution, confusion, and/or tarnishment” of trademarks. It went on to say that selling such domains violates cybersquatting laws, common law publicity rights, and unfair trading practices.
The letter includes references to Universal Music Group, Atlantic Records, Capitol Records, Warner Music Group, Parlophone Records, and Virgin Records, among others.
Several other domain names are associated with specific music executives. Those domains are for Sony Music Entertainment CEO Rob String, Columbia Records CEO Ron Perry, Alamo Records CEO Todd Moscowitz, and UMG CEO Lucian Grainge, respectively. The letter specifically mentioned RIAA chairman Mitch Glazier. Glazier addressed the issue of trademarks in the NFT industry in March. He stated that the RIAA was taking action against the NFT platform HitPiece for violating intellectual property rights.
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