First blood to UK collector in art auction fight with US tycoon twins
Iranian who fled homeland for Britain claims he was unaware of unusual terms in company’s sale policy
A FORMER Iranian asylum seeker turned art collector has struck the first blow in a David and Goliath legal battle against US billionaire twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.
Amir Soleymani, who came to Britain a decade ago, has won the first round of his court fight with the 6ft 5in one-time Olympic rowers and tech entrepreneurs, whose combined fortune is more than $4billion.
In a case with huge repercussions for UK consumers, Mr Soleymani is suing the twins’ company Nifty Gateway, an online auction site that sells digital art – or as tech-savvy collectors call it, nonfungible token (NFT) art.
The row centres around an NFT called Abundance by the artist known as Beeple (real name Michael Winkelmann), which shows a Gollum-type figure with wings, holding what look like bowling balls while caterpillars and other insects float around him.
The artwork was put up for auction by Nifty Gateway in May last year and Mr Soleymani, a Liverpool-based property magnate with a taste for collecting, lodged a bid worth $650,000. But he lost out to a $1.2million winning bid by a cryptocurrency tycoon.
That, according to Mr Soleymani, should have been that. But Nifty Gateway’s auction was unusual in that the next 99 highest bidders were each expected to pay for another edition of the work. Mr Soleymani had come third and Nifty gateway demanded his $650,000 to pay for a third edition.
Mr Soleymani insists he had no idea the auction had been set up that way and refused to pay. In response Nifty Gateway froze his online account, blocking access to his assets of around 100 NFTs.
Mr Soleymani said: “This method of auction maximises revenue for the platform and artists but is damaging to collectors.”
Under Nifty Gateway’s terms and conditions, the company said, Mr Soleymani’s only recourse was to go to arbitration in New York. Instead, he lodged legal claim in the High Court in London, insisting as a UK bidder he has a right of redress under English consumer law.
Now the Court of Appeal has ruled he has the right to challenge the fairness of Nifty Gateway’s terms and conditions. The likely result is a High Court trial in London next year in which his legal team is confident of success.
The case is of such significance that the UK’s Competition and Market Authority is backing Mr Soleymani’s legal claim. Nifty Gateway has 100,000 registered UK accounts – about a tenth of all its accounts – and the case has repercussions for other US-based online platforms.
“I just want to get my money back,” said Mr Soleymani, 47. His family were persecuted in Iran as supporteers of the Shah and he was detained and tortured before escaping to the UK in 2010. He became a British citizen last year.
In the Court of Appeal judgment, Lord Justice Birss said: “No matter how global, borderless or decentralised a trader would say its internet business is, if the trader has directed its relevant commercial activities to this country, its dealings with consumers here are subject to our consumer law.”
Thomas Brackey, Mr Soleymani’s lawyer, said: “UK citizens are to be afforded the full measure of UK legal protections, and a UK court alone must determine how the dispute is to be resolved; not some private arbitrator.”
Nifty Gateway’s UK lawyers did not respond when asked for a comment. But the company previously insisted the auction structure was clear to all.
The Winklevoss twins, who studied at Harvard and rowed in the 2008 Olympics, first rose to prominence when they sued Mark Zuckerberg, claiming he copied their idea for Facebook.
The case, featured heavily in the Oscar-winning film The Social Network, was settled out of court.