NFTs
A Judge Bans Mason Rothschild From Displaying His MetaBirkin NFTs
A federal judge in the United States has banned digital artist Mason Rothschild from displaying a series of digital artworks in the form of non-fungible tokens at a museum in Sweden. The NFTs feature 3D renderings of Hermès’ famous Birkin bags covered in fur.
Rothschild was involved in a legal battle with the luxury house after Hermès sued him about NFTs in 2022. A jury has unanimously decided held him responsible for trademark infringement and cybersquatting, ordering him to pay the fashion giant $133,000 in damages after a nine-day trial in February 2023. The court issued a permanent injunctionpreventing the artist from further infringing the Hermès trademark with his NFTs.
U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff later blasted Rothschild in an order as a “straight-up con artist” who attempted to disguise his fraud by “posing” as an artist to mint his “MetaBirkin” tokens. In response to the ruling, Rothschild insisted in a statement that “the First Amendment gives me the right to make and sell art that depicts Birkin bags.”
Earlier this year, in January, the artist filed a petition with the court seeking clarification on whether the injunction would prevent him from giving permission to the Spritmuseum in Stockholm to display the NFTs in an upcoming exhibition about Andy Warhol and the art business.
Hermès filed a response seeking to block it in February. The court then heard from two witnesses: Mia Sundberg, a representative of the museum, and Blake Gopnik, a critic who helped organize the planned exhibition. (Gopnik previously wrote a Washington Post op-ed opinion article titled “A Misguided Jury Failed to See the Art in Mason Rothschild’s MetaBirkins.”)
Court documents show that the museum planned to record the case against Rothschild in a descriptive text that would accompany the MetaBirkins if permission for their display was granted.
The judge ultimately agreed with Hermès’ legal arguments that Rothschild failed to provide details about the permissions he would grant the museum, including whether the exhibition would include merchandising or how he planned to promote the show.
“We do not know, for example, whether the license will cover the sale of MetaBirkins products in the museum shop or elsewhere,” the fashion giant argued. As such, the court ruled that there is a risk that the exhibition could circumvent the injunction.
“Without a clear and concrete statement that, as the jury unanimously concluded, [Rothschild] designed the MetaBirkins NFTs to deceive the public into believing that Hermès was somehow behind the images, there is little reason to expect visitors to the exhibition to understand that [his] the creation and distribution of MetaBirkins NFTs was a fraudulent enterprise in which Hermès had no participation,” the judge said.
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