HERMEÌ€S INTERNATIONAL and HERMEÌ€S OF PARIS, INC, Filed a complaint in New York Court in January 2022, against artist MASON ROTHSCHILD (nee Sonny Estival). The complaint against Defendant Mason Rothschild alleges and states: “As Defendant stated in a recent interview with Yahoo Finance: “There’s nothing more iconic than the HermeÌ€s Birkin bag.” Defendant is a digital speculator who is seeking to get rich quick by appropriating the brand METABIRKINS for use in creating, marketing, selling, and facilitating the exchange of digital assets known as non-fungible tokens (“NFTs”).
Defendant’s METABIRKINS brand simply rips off HermeÌ€s’ famous BIRKIN trademark by adding the generic prefix “meta” to the famous trademark BIRKIN. “Meta” and “metaverse” refer to virtual worlds and economies where digital assets such as NFTs can be sold and traded. 2. He seeks to make his fortune by swapping out HermeÌ€s’ “real life” rights for “virtual rights”. As he has explained, Defendant is trying to “create the same kind of illusion that [the Birkin] has in real life as a digital commodity.” The “digital commodities” upon which Defendant is building his business, NFTs, are unique and non-fungible (i.e., noninterchangeable) units of data stored on a blockchain just as Case 1:22-cv-00384”
SOURCE: DIRECT COMPLAINT LETTER | APRIL 25 2023
