“Grumpy Cat” Creator Sends Cease-and-Desist NFT to Memecoin Issuer
The creator of the Grumpy Cat meme has issued a cease-and-desist letter to Twitter user “SlumDOGE millionaire” urging him to refrain from pushing a memecoin that potentially infringes on their intellectual property rights.
An official letter was issued to Glauber Contessoto via NFT last week addressing the promotion of a token named GrumpyCat, which it sees as engaging in clear and willful infringement.
The letter states that Grumpy Cat Limited has neither authorized nor consented to the use of the trademarks in connection with this particular cryptocurrency offering.
In a tweet on Tuesday, the creator of the Grumpy Cat meme called out Contessoto for supporting unauthorized offerings that continue to infringe on GCL’s intellectual property rights. The tweet described these recommendations as a “sad attempt” to deceive unsuspecting traders.
“Don’t be fooled by these scammers or their lies. No legal issues have been resolved. GCL will never approve such scam coins,” the creator said.
The tweet followed Contessoto’s claim that the intangible concerns surrounding the Grumpy Cat token had been resolved. Etherscan shows the project has around 2,900 holders (Blockworks encourages due diligence when interacting with memecoins, always do your own research!)
Meme creators typically do not have copyright control over their creations, but the original copyright holders of the material used in memes can take action against memecoins or other uses of their copyrighted content.
“Pepe the Frog” Matt Furie famously sued Alex Jones’ Infowars over the sale of meme posters, winning a $15,000 settlement in 2019. A memecoin that leveraged the popularity of Furie’s Pepe the Frog has recently made headlines for attracting considerable investor interest.
While memecoins struggle with the concept of copyright, it is becoming more common to leverage NFTs as a means of serving legal documents, especially when faced with the challenge of unknown or unverifiable identities
Last week, Loevy & Loevy attorney Mike Kanovitz demanded a settlement Pseudonymous memecoin creator Ben.eth via an NFT, alleging wire fraud during a $7 million token presale.
In a separate instance this year, a US judge ordered an anonymous group of hackers to refund one of their victims $1 million USDT.
This ruling, which took place in the Southern District of Florida, upheld the plaintiff’s decision to use NFTs to deliver the legal documents to the unidentified hackers.
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