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by Lipika Deka
The NFT trademark ecosystem is heating up of late and the newest entrant to dive into this space is the world’s largest stock exchange by market capitalization – the New York Stock Exchange or NYSE. On February 10, the platform which goes by the nickname, ‘The Big Board’ filed a trademark application to register the name “NYSE” for a variety of crypto products, that incorporates nonfungible tokens or NFTs.
In accordance with the company’s official NYSE NFT website, the forthcoming NFT collection will put emphasis on one-of-a-kind moments. The initial wave of these “First Trade” collectibles will celebrate the first NYSE trades by Spotify, DoorDash, Roblox, Snowflake, Unity, and Coupang.
The platform also said that it will focus initially on those six companies before eventually welcoming others to join the community. As stated by trademark attorney Josh Gerben, the NYSE’s trademark application also indicates future plans to launch an NFT marketplace. This is not the first time NYSE has ventured into the digital token market.
On April 12, 2021, NYSE via Twitter posted a series of threads unveiling non-fungible tokens celebrating the ‘First Trades’ of six of its most notable listings. Having said that applications for trademarks in the NFT market have increased significantly over the last few weeks.
Avalanches of NFT trademark applications
Popular lingerie giant Victoria Secret filed a trademark application with the US Patent and Trademark Office on February 8, which was later posted on Twitter by Josh Gerben. As per the documents, Victoria’s Secret has filed trademarks to sell digital goods such as clothing, undergarments, and footwear.
Two weeks ago, Kobe Bryant’s estate has also filed three trademark applications for virtual goods as his family is seeking to protect his name in the metaverse. The filings include “Kobe Bryant” and “Mamba Forever,” for digital items like clothing, jewelry, avatars, emotes, toys, and trading cards, and “Mamacita,” in memory of the basketball star’s daughter Gianna.
The competition got more fierce when on February 3rd Nike announced that it was suing an online marketplace-StockX, for launching non-fungible tokens built on Nike shoes, bringing attention to the limits of crypto trademark law.
Nike in its suit alleges that the resulting crypto assets constitute trademark infringement, false designation of origin, and trademark dilution, among other violations.
