The Issue With NFT Scanned Excerpts of Quentin Tarantino’s Scripts Is Finally Solved
If you’re a creative artist, you know more than anyone else about copyrights and that sometimes those copyrights don’t allow you to sell your own products because of an agreement with a company or a studio. That’s what happened to Quentin Tarantino.
What Happened
By offering handwritten pages from the screenplay of his 1994 blockbuster Pulp Fiction along with accompanying illustrations, Tarantino has been able to move forward with his foray into the non-fungible token (NFT) space after the artist and movie production company Miramax settled a lawsuit filed against him last year.
According to the legal news website Courthousenews.com, attorneys for Miramax and Tarantino submitted a notice of settlement in a federal court in Los Angeles on September 9. The release did not specify the terms of the settlement.
The studio sued Tarantino in November to stop him from offering movie-related products for sale as NFTs, asserting that Miramax has the legal authority to create, market, and sell digital assets associated with its film library.
The latest warning was issued just one week after the parties informed U.S. District Judge Fernando Olguin that an earlier mediation attempt had failed to provide a settlement.
Lawyer Aaron Steinberg states that Tarantino granted Miramax extensive rights in Pulp Fiction, but the contract defines ‘Reserved Rights’ that Tarantino retained, which include:
- The soundtrack album.
- Print publication including without limitation screenplay publication, music publishing, book publication, and so on.
- Live performance, TV remakes, and more.
However, as the attorney asserts, Tarantino believes that the sale of one-of-a-kind scanned screenplay excerpts fall within the scope of his circumscribed script publication rights. The question of whether the sale of a single, unique copy counts as “publication” arises since Tarantino is selling a single, unique copy of every NFT in his collection.
