Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5000 Days achieved a landmark sale, and a definitive legal ruling has clarified who could claim involvement in the purchase. Metakovan (Vignesh Sundaresan) and Twobadour (Anand Venkateswaran) formally split, their dispute centering on authorship of the acquisition. In 2023, Sundaresan and Portkey Technologies sued Venkateswaran, alleging trademark infringement, injury to business reputation, and dilution tied to statements about his participation; Sundaresan argued that suggesting his former colleague was a co-buyer misrepresented the facts and harmed their brands. In January, U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken approved a final consent judgment that set strict boundaries on how the purchase could be described.
Under the consent judgment, Venkateswaran is barred from claiming or implying that he was responsible for or involved in the purchase of Everydays: The First 5000 Days. He may not add his name or likeness to websites or profiles tied to Portkey, Metapurse, Metakovan, Sundaresan, or his former pseudonym Twobadour when used in connection with these entities. The judgment thus ends the long-running ownership dispute, establishing Sundaresan as the buyer through his entities with no shared credit for the purchase.
Earlier this month, Venkateswaran submitted a report detailing steps taken to align his public statements with the court’s terms. He said he unfollowed or left Portkey social profiles and paid an undisclosed sum to Sundaresan and Portkey, and he would request corrections from third-party sites to remove biographical references implying involvement. The market context remains challenging: NFT markets have cooled since the peak, with closures or retrenchments at major marketplaces and a 2023 report finding most NFTs effectively worthless. The Beeple sale thus stands as a landmark legal resolution in a volatile market, clarifying ownership while the broader ecosystem recalibrates.
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