On March 1, Corr Cronin attorney John Bender was quoted in the GeekWire article, “Wizards of the Coast sends takedown notice to organizers of fan-made ‘Magic’ NFT project.” Bender reinforced his client’s position that a preliminary white paper conceptualizing a framework for improving gameplay by utilizing NFTs and a decentralized autonomous organization or “DAO” was intended to fully comply with the law:

“This is a classic case of a company with deep pockets throwing its weight around before it has all the facts. Immediately hiring outside lawyers to send legal demands about a preliminary white paper by a member of your fanbase, before having even a five-minute chat to learn more, is a mistake. We all know blockchains, NFTs, and DAOs have great promise, but that will only materialize if people have the courage to innovate and apply the technology. What is clear is that those who characterized the concept as a scam or worse have no idea what they are talking about. My client looks forward to speaking with Wizards of the Coast about changes to the concept, which was motivated all along by a genuine desire to improve player engagement, not violate anyone’s copyright.”

Bender later expanded on these comments in the following statement to Decrypt.co, a news outlet covering Web3 and the decentralized web:

“This is an important issue not just for creators and companies, but for Web 3.0 more broadly. To a large extent, everyone is still scrambling to sort out how NFTs, DAOs, and the Web3 ecosystem are going to fit into existing law, and how the law is going to keep up with and support blockchain technology. It’s an age old problem really. I can tell you that the idea behind the concept came about based on a genuine desire to create a community, enhance game play, and have fun in a non-infringing way using NFTs and blockchain, and it generated significant interest. Wizards of the Coast should embrace this. We look forward to more engagement with Wizards of the Coast on changes to the concept. Those who attempted to characterize it as a scam or worse are misinformed.”

See the GeekWire article for more details about this case.