Peter Cramer

Peter Cramer is an associate in the Corporate Department and a member of the Technology, Media & Telecommunications Group.

Peter earned his J.D. from Columbia Law School in 2021, where he was honored as a James Kent Scholar and received the Michael D. Remer Memorial Prize for Excellence in Copyright and Art Law. At Columbia, Peter served as co-President of the Entertainment, Art and Sports Law Society; as coach of AIPLA, Columbia's intellectual property moot court team; and as a staffer for the Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts.

Peter received his B.A. from Wesleyan University in 2014, where his senior thesis documentary film earned him Departmental Honors and the Best Documentary Award from the Film Studies Department. After college, he was nominated for an Emmy for his work on the documentary film American Experience: The Mine Wars. Peter was born and raised in Massachusetts.

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Part II: With New DAO Law on the Books, Utah Joins Race with Wyoming and Tennessee to Become U.S. “Crypto Capital”

As discussed in Part I of this series, state DAO LLC laws have been enacted in the last several years and have become one option for decentralized autonomous organizations (or DAOs) to create a so-called “legal wrapper” or real-world corporate entity to shield individual members from liability. In Part II we will look at some … Continue Reading

Part I: With New DAO Law on the Books, Utah Joins Race with Wyoming and Tennessee to Become U.S. “Crypto Capital”

By Jason Finger and Peter Cramer on May 25, 2023 Posted in Blockchain Governance, DAOs, DeFi & Financial Services, Legislation, Smart Contracts

Little-known legal trivia: In 1977 Wyoming was the first state to pioneer the LLC, which is now a commonly applied legal innovation. Fast forward more than forty years…in July 2021, Wyoming again tried to be at the vanguard of new corporate formations and passed legislation that recognized decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, as legally distinct … Continue Reading

Three Questions Brands Must Ask about Trademarks and the Metaverse

By Peter Cramer, Wai Choy and Jonathan Mollod on June 6, 2022 Posted in Metaverse, NFTs, Trademarks

Web 3.0 and the promise of the metaverse has generated excitement about new markets for businesses large and small. But as with any technological frontier, legal uncertainties cause new risks to emerge alongside the opportunities. One area currently full of legal questions is trademark law. We will examine what we see as three of the … Continue Reading

As NFTs Blur the Line Between “Receipt” and “Product”, Trademarks Owners Fight Over New Virtual Markets

By Peter Cramer and Brendan O'Rourke on April 11, 2022 Posted in Digital Assets, Litigation: Civil, NFTs, Trademarks

Last month, our post about art NFTs and the DMCA highlighted the distinction between non-fungible tokens and the copyrighted works they represent. In the context of copyright, this dichotomy is generally uncontroversial: In most cases, an NFT merely points to an underlying work but does not contain a copy of the work it represents, and … Continue Reading

Will NFT Piracy Compel Changes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act?

By Peter Cramer and David Munkittrick on March 16, 2022 Posted in Blockchain Governance, Copyright, NFTs

So you bought an NFT. You now own what is effectively an immutable electronic deed meant to record ownership of an asset, often a digital artwork. You probably paid for the NFT upfront—and if the artist is popular, you may have paid a substantial sum. This is one factor that has made the NFT market … Continue Reading

Treasury Department Steps Up Its Counter-Ransomware Efforts and Simultaneously Issues New Sanctions Compliance Guidance for Virtual Currency Industry

By Seetha Ramachandran and Peter Cramer on October 27, 2021 Posted in AML/KYC, Cryptocurrencies, Cybersecurity, FinCEN

Recently, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the U.S. Treasury Department, released a report on ransomware trends stating that during the first half of 2021, 68 different ransomware variants extracted approximately $600 million from victims across the country. FinCEN identified Bitcoin as the most common ransomware-related payment method in reported transactions and … Continue Reading