This article is written by Shweta Jha, a 4th year law student at University of Mumbai during her internship with LeDroit India.
INTRODUCTION
McDonald’s files trademark for metaverse ‘virtual restaurant’ in the metaverse that will actually deliver food to your home. The world’s largest fast-food chain, which has more than 39,000 locations in more than 100 countries will set up location in metaverse, claims it will be able to deliver food online and to your door.
KEY-FACTS
McDonald’s has filed a series of trademarks for a virtual restaurant that will deliver food online and in persona. The US Patent and Trademark Office, on February 4, has received ten applications by the company to cover both McDonald’s and McCafe. This will enable the organisation to line up a sequence of restaurants inside the metaverse that will be taking orders online and delivering at your home or in the metaverse. The virtual food and beverages are likely to be downloadable multimedia files that will be having artwork, text, audio, videos, and non-fungible (NFT’s).
One of the trademarks was for “virtual food and beverage products,” including NFTs, while another encompasses “operating a virtual eatery online featuring home delivery. It also line-up to trademark “online factual and virtual concerts” and other entertainment services within its virtual McCafe.
According to a Twitter post by trademark lawyer Josh Gerben, “You are hanging out in the metaverse and get hungry. You don’t have to put down your headset. You walk into a McDonald’s and place an order. It arrives at your door a little while later.”
The requests have been made after Panera Breads filed for the “Paneraverse” on February 3, 2022. Panera Bread is a bakery company that requested to trademark its downloadable, virtual food and beverage items “for use in virtual worlds,” along with NFTs and the option to purchase actual goods inside the virtual world to be delivered. McDonald’s and Panera Bread are the latest to prepare for a virtual establishment revolution, joining great corporations like Nike, Walmart and Sketchers, which have all made homogenous filings in the past three months.
WHAT IS METAVERSE?
The metaverse is designed to be a place where users can virtually live. The metaverse, by means of headsets and personalized digital avatars, promises users a cartoonish simulation of the real world. It is an idea of a persistent, online, 3D universe that unite multiple different virtual spaces. One can think of it as a future replication of the internet. The metaverse will allow users to meet, work, play games, and socialize together in these 3D spaces.
The metaverse is an abstract of an online, 3D, virtual space connecting users in all facets of their lives. The ability of the metaverse is that we could build a new world. It would connect numerous platforms, similar to the internet containing different websites accessible through a single browser.
The metaverse will be operated by adding reality, with each user controlling a character or avatar. For example, you would possibly take a mixed reality meeting with an Oculus VR headset in your virtual office, finish work and relax during a blockchain-based game, then manage your crypto portfolio and finances all inside the metaverse.
The metaverse will combine economies, digital identity, decentralized governance, and other applications as well. Even today, user-generated and ownership of valuable items and currencies help develop a single, united metaverse. All these features provide blockchain with the potential to power this future technology.
IMPACT ON HUMAN LIVES
The objective of the Metaverse is to create a new universe in our present universe. Creating different universes with definite apps, games, and simulations in the Metaverse. There will be an excellent number of changes in social media due to the Metaverse system. Generally, the features and technologies of the Metaverse will affect human lifestyles positively as well as negatively.
Everything has positive effects with some negative effects. With the combination of Virtual reality and replication, the form of social communication will take another distinctive structure. The Metaverse technology will allow the human being experience such as visiting people living on different sides of the world, virtually going on a vacation, and doing many extensive tasks related to practical learning.
Positive impact of the Metaverse
The appreciable thing about the Metaverse is that it will be able to create a virtual world where according to one’s wish one can furnish their surroundings like the real world. As of now, we can play games online, meet people and explore some things online but we cannot feel it. The Metaverse with virtual reality will give us the opportunity to feel by making it real.
Advantage of the Metaverse include:
Bringing people together on a single platform.
Making NFTs and live entertainment.
Managing activities as per one’s convenience such as Attending schools, college, and offices from home.
Express ourselves in new and exciting ways.
Creating collaborative work environment.
Learning will be made easier by creating tedious things more interesting.
Work will feel like play
Negative effects of the Metaverse
People might get addictive to virtual world of Metaverse resulting into distraction from the actual world/life which can extremely affect the usual human lifestyle.
Disadvantages of the Metaverse include:
Increase in addiction and distraction.
It has the possibility of making people lose track of time.
Overstimulate human being’s consciousness.
Mental health will be impacted.
Separating people from the real world and real nature.
Increase in use of social media and pressure of social comparison
Virtual world will become augmented reality.
LEGAL PROSPECTIVE
The Metaverse, or Web 3.0, is developing, it begin from the development of blockchain which is an immutable database to store crucial information, then the proliferation of cryptocurrencies, later, the ownership are NFTs. People are buying digital art, people can buy ownership of the future asset in the Metaverse. All asset ownership, both digitally and physically, might be ported over to an NFT on blockchains. Offices, homes, land, clothing, etc legally represented by deeds, contracts, and leases have been tokenized. This means people can buy digital Offices, homes, land, and other objects.
In the Metaverse, people will interact, perform, can own assets, have connections, build things, create intellectual property (IP), have copyright issues, and advertise. Further, crimes may happen, insurance likely will be developed, and a massive host of other real life concepts will evolve leading to the involement of legal professionals.
It’s an immersive digital world where you’ll soon work, play and, naturally enter disputes. As users resolve their dispute a new legal system will emerge that we may come to call by an old name: metalaw. The technology of Metaverse or Web 3.0 has been described by veteran tech CEO John Hanke as a “dystopian nightmare”. The young and tech-savvy users, as well as sleepily attending meetings, will be capable of harming each other.
The cost of crimes against metaverse users has the potential to be far more disastrous than current technologies. As existing law struggles to cope with once-unimaginable actions, a new legal paradigm will take shape, a new codified law must come into existence to deal with the disputes related to Metaverse although the metaverse is so vast in that no one can predict the full legal outcome.
The foregoing issues are just a handful of legal issues that will get arise by the creation of a metaverse, and other key issues such as privacy and data protection will come to the front line immediately as metaverses are developed and more people begin to interact within them.
CONCLUSION
When we look toward the time ahed, big tech giants are trying to lead the way. Facebook, also known as Meta today, has already opened up it’s metaverse world, Horizon Worlds, and Microsoft plans to open up a metaverse version of its Teams app soon. Smaller companies can get in on the action too, by securing their own space on ready-made metaverse platforms.
While the Metaverse isn’t the sole virtual world inside which these trademarks are used, Meta appears to be leaning more heavily into its vision of a virtual than the other major technology company, and it’s seeing results.
Josh Gerben says, “I think you’re going to see every brand that you can think of make these filings within the next 12 months,”. “I don’t think anyone wants to be the next Blockbuster and just completely ignore a new technology that’s coming.”
If building the metaverse is certain, it must be done with proper precaution and with patience.
