The Bataclan - Paris
A prominent French surgeon is facing legal and disciplinary action after attempting to sell as an NFT an X-ray taken of a former patient who survived the November 2015 attack on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris by members of the Islamic State (Isis) (non-fungible token). The X-ray, which he listed for sale on the NFT marketplace OpenSea for the equivalent of $2,776 in Ethereum, showed a 39mm round from an assault rifle lodged near the bone in the patient's forearm.
Emmanuel Masmejean, a senior orthopedic surgeon at Paris's Georges Pompidou Hospital, described his former patient in the listing for his ill-conceived digital artwork, claiming that "this young patient, who lost her boyfriend in the attack, had an open fracture of the left forearm with a remaining Kalashnikov bullet in the soft tissue."
"This doctor, not content with violating the duty of medical secrecy owed to this patient, though it would be a good idea to describe this young woman's private life, making her perfectly identifiable," the woman's lawyer, Elodie Abraham, told The Guardian. She went on to say that the surgeon even called her on January 23rd "to justify himself without expressing the slightest regret or empathy towards her." The woman has requested anonymity. The attack on the Bataclan concert hall was part of a coordinated series of shootings and bomb attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015, that killed 130 people.
In the United States, the US Copyright Office's Copyright Compendium states that images with no creative purpose, such as "medical imaging produced by X-rays, ultrasounds, magnetic resonance imaging, or other diagnostic equipment," will not be copied. However, under the UK's Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, an X-ray may be considered a photograph, in which case the copyright would be transferred to the medical provider. According to intellectual property lawyer Joelle Verbrugge, medical imagery is not protected by copyright under French law.
One underlying issue with the largely unregulated NFT market is the possibility of minting and selling someone else's copyrighted work, potentially exposing the minter to intellectual property theft. In this case, the surgeon attempted to steal not only medical imagery from the Georges Pompidou Hospital but also the agency of his former patient.
Selena Mattei