Ioanna Lapatoura presents her research at the Second Tricontinental Workshop on IP

Ioanna Lapatoura, Lecturer at UCL Laws and member of the Institute of Brand and Innovation Law (IBIL), was invited to present her research on copyright law and the impact of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) on galleries, museums and the preservation of cultural heritage at the Second Tricontinental Workshop on Intellectual Property, hosted by the Faculty of Law of the University of La Laguna, Spain on 26th October 2023.

This year’s workshop focused on intellectual property and cultural heritage. Ioanna co-presented a paper entitled ‘All roads lead to tokens: the impact of NFTs on galleries and museums’ with Professor Péter Mezei, University of Szeged. The research, forming part of the ReCreating Europe project, seeks to highlight that while NFTs are perhaps most frequently associated with digital artworks, they may prove to be highly relevant to the ‘real-world’ GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums).

The paper identifies how NFTs could provide a solution for preserving and disseminating both culturally significant works in art forms typically hosted by these cultural organisations, such as paintings and sculptures, as well as enabling the preservation of digital or conceptual art pieces, and even artistic performances in GLAMs for the first time. NFTs’ potential to encapsulate digitally scarce versions of such art could contribute to a more diverse and inclusive cultural heritage that can be accessed by the public.

The full paper will soon appear as a jointly authored book chapter that will feature in E. Bonadio and C. Sganga (eds), NFTs, creativity and the law: within and beyond copyright (Routledge, forthcoming 2024).

More information

• Read the final draft of the book chapter here.
• Find out more about Ioanna’s research here.
• Further details about the conference and its programme can be found here and here