Abstract
The rapid emergence and institutionalization of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) across global distributed ledger ecosystems have precipitated substantial doctrinal and practical friction within intellectual property (IP) law. While NFTs are widely commercialized as mechanisms for authenticating digital provenance and ownership, the fundamental dichotomy between on-chain cryptographic tokens and underlying off-chain copyright and trademark rights remains poorly understood by market participants and inconsistently addressed across legal jurisdictions. This study provides a comprehensive comparative analysis of IP rights enforcement within NFT markets across four key jurisdictions: the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the People's Republic of China. Utilizing a functional comparative legal methodology combined with empirical doctrinal case analyses—including landmark disputes such as Hermès v. Rothschild, Yuga Labs v. Ripps, and Shenzhen Feice v. Bigverse—we evaluate how existing statutory regimes, intermediary safe harbors, and judicial remedies adapt to decentralized, immutable protocols. Our findings reveal substantial jurisdictional fragmentation regarding platform liability, moral rights alienability, and the extraterritorial enforceability of remedial injunctions against decentralized storage networks such as IPFS. We conclude by evaluating hybrid regulatory pathways, algorithmic compliance architectures, and alternative dispute resolution mechanisms capable of reconciling the immutability of distributed ledgers with territorial intellectual property enforcement.
