A law of 28 February 2022 authorizes the auction of intangible works of art.
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If the two large Anglo-Saxon houses of auctions, London, Christie’s, and New York, Sotheby’s, surf from 2021 on the NFT market, they could not until now organize sessions of sale of intangibles in France because the Commercial Code did not allow them. Article L. 320-1 enhanced public auction houses to sell only so-called “corporal” furniture. Which ex officio excluded digital works and objects, and more than the NFT.
A year ago, Christie’s could not sell in Paris the work of the artist Beeple who was awarded, in New York, $ 69.3 million (€ 63 million), March 11, 2021. But this legislative lock has just jumping with the law of 28 February 2022 to modernize the regulation of the art market: there is always a question of “public auctions of furniture property”, but now ” Subject to the special provisions for the sale of certain intangible furniture “.
When a senator, Jacky Deromedi, introduced first reading in October 2019 this modification of the Commercial Code to extend to intangible furniture the legal regime for voluntary sales of furniture at auction, it is far from suspecting that this will benefit two years and a half later to NFT – while it was aimed at the business and civilian clientele first. “This innovation is appointed to support the dazzling development of the digital artwork market. This opens even sales houses to the immaterial economy,” said Senator Catherine Belrmiti at second reading. February 22.
Hybrid sales
Non-fungible chips, patents, brands … Sales houses in France now have free cubits. Mid-February, before the promulgation of the law, MP Pierre-Yves Bournazel had arrested the Minister of Culture, Roselyne Bachelot, on this “legal blux” that prevailed until then for auction houses. In order not to be out of the law, he pointed out, some of them organize “hybrid sales, in which the acquired intangible work is then delivered in two ways to the acquirer: physically via a material support (tablet, key USB, etc.) and numerically via a non-fungible token, or delivery of a twin paper drawing of the digital work “.
In January, the Voluntary Sales Council, Regulator of the Sector, had suggested to the Government to set up a “temporary and derogatory regime for the sale of NFT related to works of art”.