By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 22nd, 2024
Green has also reported his collaboration with the authorities to recover his stolen property.
Actor Seth Green’s Bored Ape NFT was stolen weeks before he releases a new Ape show where the stolen Ape plays a key role in the show. While the actor may have already lost commercial rights to the NFTs, it doesn’t stop him from trying to recover them. Seth Green lost the NFTs in an apparent phishing attack. Per available information, the stolen Bored Ape from Green was sold for $200,000, according to transaction records between the scammer and a user referred to as DarkWing84.
Green, however, is making attempts to recover the NFT. One of his attempts was a tweet addressed to a Twitter user going by the same handle as the buyer. The tweet urges the “buyer” to reach out to him so that they can fix the issue.
Speaking to Gary Vaynerchuk during an NFT conference VeeCon this weekend, Green explained that he purchased the stolen Bored Ape back in July 2021. He added that he had been working on the IP exploration so that the Ape would be cast as a star in his new show.
Losing Commercial Rights
Per a report on Coinspeaker, there’s a chance that Green also lost the commercial rights to use the Ape on his show when he lost it. It should be noted that commercial rights stand among the most valuable pecks that come with owning a Bored Ape NFT.
Edward Lee, a renowned NFT lawyer, in an earlier interview, said that Bored Apes were unique because owners have an unlimited global license to use them for any purpose including the creation of derivative works. With this license, the buyers get unlimited rights to use their NFTs for commercial purposes.
Highlighting the possible reason for the success of the Bored Ape business model, Lee published that it is highly unusual to find someone who wanted to use their NFTs for commercial purposes as well as derivative works from a single Bored Ape character.
On the matter of commercial rights, it remains unclear what this loss means for Green’s upcoming show. Nonetheless, it leaves a lot of unanswered questions about NFT ownership as the new owner should own the commercial rights to the Ape.
OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, has stated that its terms of services prohibit the use of its platform to sell stolen NFTs.
According to their mail, “our platform policies and Terms of Service explicitly prohibit the use of OpenSea to buy, sell, or transfer stolen and/or fraudulently obtained items.”
It is imperative to note, however, that OpenSea does not have the mandate to freeze or delist NFTs existing on decentralized blockchains. The most they can do is to disable one’s ability to use the platform for buying and selling stolen commodities. Green has however reported his collaboration with the authorities to recover his stolen property.