Blockchain and Digital Assets

Wiggin and Dana’s Blockchain and Digital Assets Group brings together experienced lawyers from our intellectual property, corporate and emerging companies, fund formation, litigation, and art law practice groups, who are focused on investments in and application of these technologies across a variety of industries. Because we have a deep technical and business understanding of decentralized technologies, we can serve as the perfect legal and strategic partner for clients who are working to develop practical solutions in this space, where there is fast-paced change and little preexisting guidance.

The distributed ledger technology, blockchain, forms the technical backbone that provides the basis for cryptocurrencies, as well as new and evolving digital assets, such as NFTs and smart contracts. NFTs have made a splash in the world of art and collectibles, but also have important practical applications in both the real world (e.g., access to concerts or events or real estate or automobile title information) and the virtual one (e.g., digital objects that exist in video games, on-line digital distribution platforms, social media platforms, web3, and the so-called metaverse).

Wiggin and Dana’s agile and creative legal team brings technical and business acumen and cross-functional knowledge that spans traditional practice areas like intellectual property, internet law, corporate and securities, investment management, litigation, privacy and social media, regulatory, antitrust, and art law. Collectively, our team provides start-ups, venture capitalists, fund managers, investors, and established companies with the combined expertise to help evaluate, implement, invest in, and protect blockchain-based technologies and digital assets. Our legal team will also help provide strategic legal advice for companies in this space, from assisting on transactions to handling legal disputes that may arise to guiding them through regulatory and market condition challenges around blockchain, crypto, and the metaverse. For individual investors, our Private Client Services team can advise on transferring digital assets as part of an estate plan. 

Some highlighted matters that the Blockchain and Digital Assets Group have handled for clients in this space include:

• Assist NFT licensing platforms and individual holders of commercial rights for NFTs to develop licensing strategies, draft IP license and commercialization agreements and negotiate licensing arrangements with brands.
• Assisting clients in conducting due diligence on and negotiating the acquisition of a multi-million-dollar digital real estate asset within an online role-playing game.
• Drafting purchase agreements for sale of digital real estate assets in metaverse.
• Assisting clients on both sell and buy side of transactions involving NFTs on legal issues including, due diligence, considering strategy relating to intellectual property, and drafting and revising contracts and “smart contracts.”
• Counseling clients on structuring and negotiating multimillion dollar investments denominated in cryptocurrency.
• Assisting clients developing NFT and blockchain-based products and services with negotiation and execution of third-party developer agreements.
• Developing a patent portfolio relating to digital ticketing and NFT-related inventions for NFT pioneer YellowHeart. 
• Assisting clients in drafting patent applications pertaining to blockchain and metaverse-related inventions in the video-game space.
• Advising on the patentability of inventions pertaining to the use of NFTs in video games to store digital assets and enable players to take their in-game purchased assets across video game platforms.
• Reviewing and negotiating a patent and software license agreement covering the creation and distribution of blockchain-related software products, including the allocation of tokens to be distributed on the same blockchain.
• Drafting foundational agreements for providing merchants with custom-branded tokens for purchasing goods and services by end-users on merchant websites.
• Conducting a comprehensive review and revision of employment agreements, contractor agreements and modeling waivers to ensure sufficient rights to create and commercialize NFTs stemming from the work product created by employees and contractors.
• Advising on litigation matters in the emerging DeFi space.
• Advising on clients on entity formation issues pertaining to DAOs in the De-Sci space.
• Assisting clients in registering and prosecuting trademarks and service marks in the metaverse.
• Advising clients on the registration of trademarks covering NFTs.
• Advising clients on the formation and regulation of private investment funds, special purpose vehicles, and investment clubs investing in blockchain technologies and digital assets.
• Representing a buyer in its acquisition of a trading platform for NFTs, digital collectibles and virtual goods.
• Advising clients on structuring gifts of digital assets, including transfers to trusts where legal title is separated from beneficial ownership.
• Updating estate plans to make it possible to access and distribute digital assets among heirs at death.
• Advising on digital marketplace for sale of NFTs, including assisting client with mapping out and developing licensing scheme and foundational licensing and IP agreements for buyers and sellers.
• Representing clients in federal litigation involving creation and sale of cryptocurrency.
• Assisting clients with drafting patent applications for products and services in the financial, retail, and consumer industries that use novel applications of blockchain technology.
• Advise and assist clients on response to DMCA take-down requests relating to NFT projects.
• Advise clients on trademark issues pertaining to ENS.
• Reviewing and advising clients on Coinbase terms and conditions for brokerage and escrow services to institutional customers.
• Reviewing and negotiating license agreement of a patented blockchain technology between a software development client and an international financial institution.