Kim Kardashian fails to credit NFT artist on Instagram, faces potential lawsuit
Kim Kardashian West (KKW) has been caught resharing the work of an NFT creator without credit. The reality star could soon be locked in a legal battle over the incident.
On March 14, KKW posted a copy of digital artist Kefan404’s colourful photograph with the caption “Pull up!” and tagged her celebrity sisters.
But Kefan404’s tag was missing. They commented on the post shortly after: “Hey Kim, thanks for sharing my work. Give credit [sic] would be very nice.”
After days of radio silence, Kefan404’s plea attracted attention from KKW’s 210 million followers. Before long, many of the top comments on the post included requests to properly credit the artist.
Instead of fixing the oversight, KKW deleted the post entirely, leaving Kefan404 — who sells NFTs of their creations — unable to capitalize on the widespread exposure usually associated with megastars sharing creative work.
In fact, Kefan404 was initially open to discussing the situation with Protos, but eventually declined citing advice from their lawyer.
Measuring lost NFT revenue from uncredited work
If that’s the case, Kefan404’s lawyers face the challenge of measuring how much the digital artist lost by remaining uncredited by KKW — who ironically just completed her first year of law school.
For reference, Kefan404 has so far sold several works as NFTs, for a total of 5.3 ETH ($9,600).
While they haven’t offered an NFT of the work KKW posted, it’s likely the public endorsement could’ve kicked off a bidding war, given the current NFT climate.
[Read more: Beeple NFT tops almost every ‘Old World Masters’ ever auctioned]
There’s also quantifying the followers Kefan404 stood to gain if they were credited correctly.
Kefan404 has about 76,400 followers, with a few thousand added since March 15 — far less than the 1.8 million likes KKW’s post received before it was removed.
SHΞEP (Kefan404) 
Isolation (Kefan404) 
Birds of Paradise (Kefan404)
Protos reached out to KKW’s camp and will update this piece should we hear back.
In any case, these are relatively uncharted waters for both parties. Historically, cases of copyright infringement on social media tend to be settled out of court for undisclosed amounts.
But with the advent of the crypto art boom, the matter of crediting artists appropriately (especially those that issue corresponding NFTs) takes on an extra layer of importance — which could make or break careers.