At a basic level, Metaverse is a tool allowing you to use augmented reality to overlap computer objects on real-life scenery or navigate in an entirely virtual world. The virtual or augmented objects occur right in front of your vision via a head-mounted visor, combined with worn devices that provide audio or sensory feedback.
The technology has been around for quite a while, beginning its history back in the 1960s in military aviation. It started as head-up displays or HUDs that allowed pilots to see critical flight information right in front of them instead of controlling it on various sensor displays around the cockpit. By now, the technology has become largely presented in the civilian sector, offering unlimited opportunities to creators.
Metaverse opens a new age for computer-aided design. Developing a digital 3d model, visualizing it, “seeing” how a product should look in the real world, testing it, sharing it with collaborators to co-create and customers to get instant feedback make it way faster and easier to shape it the right way, avoiding costly rework in the real world, and creates the absolutely new economy.
But with new opportunities come new challenges. For example, analyzing the impact the metaverse will have on the Intellectual Property rights of creators is as tricky as trying to define it.
Metaverse today is still an uncharted land in terms of IP and licensing, as any user in this decentralized system can copy or mimic your design if you fail to secure virtual but impenetrable walls for your personal creative space.
And apart from the possibility of theft of CAD files, there is a chance of your design product being integrated into a Metaverse world. Imagine creating a design of a new beer bottle to see later it involved in multiple episodes of graphic violence in some MMO-game. That wouldn’t be good for your brand representation, and you may want to avoid that on the stage of licensing the usage.
So, what steps can be taken to mitigate the theft and infringement possibility of CAD content on the Metaverse? Blockchain technology can help manage the risk.
The CADChain’s legal tech expert BORIS has two pills to help you dive deeper into this virtual world and make it back with your CAD files.
The blue pill: Managing IP through Non-Fungible Tokens
When creating a product via Metaverse, you inevitably share it with other parties.
NFTs linked to a digital asset (3d model) can allow rights holders to ensure IP ownership is maintained.
NFTs (non-fungible tokens, you may read on our view on them in the corresponding article) hold the necessary information about your product (3d model) and also metadata associated with it:
- proof of ownership
- history of ownership
- legal rights linked to it
- changes made by all collaborators
- versions history etc.
So by making an NFT of your digital asset, you may not worry about trust anymore. All the transaction chain is secured on the blockchain and is entirely traceable. And even when you transfer CAD files from one virtual world to another, all IP rights information remains embedded into it, ensuring that your IP rights are secured.
The green pill: Managing IP through with Blockchain and smart contracts
It is crucial to properly license IP over your CAD files on Metaverse or across Metaverses, paying attention to every piece, part, and detail.
Ricardian smart contracts will make it possible to easily license IP ownership over all aspects and parts of your CAD file. This mixture of cryptography and geometry creates geometric twins of your files on the blockchain while securing you as its sole owner with the one and only master key.
The Web 2.0 version of the Internet we are using is not built for content ownership. You can take any content on the Internet if you want, and it’s hard to detect it. Smart contracts change this. The smart contract tells everyone who is the owner of this content.
Web 3.0 solves the content ownership problem and makes our digital assets portable. Now the creators can find more ways to make money.
This allows sharing the design with millions across platforms while actually ‘owning’ the digital asset and reselling the multiple times.
We strongly suggest that you take both pills.
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