NFTs were sold to artists as a fix for an old injustice: the painter who sells cheap and watches collectors reap the resale windfall. A smart contract, the pitch ran, would skim a royalty off every future sale forever, enforced by code instead of courts. In 2023 that promise unraveled when marketplaces made royalties optional and creators discovered there was no law underneath the code. This UpLaw analysis separates the token from the file from the copyright (17 U.S.C. § 202), explains why U.S. law supplies no resale-royalty right (the first-sale doctrine of § 109, the gutted California Resale Royalties Act, VARA's narrow reach), and walks the contract theories that break on formation and privity. It reads the two decisions that actually matter—Hermès v. Rothschild and Yuga Labs v. Ripps—to show that trademark, not royalty law, holds the enforceable rights, and it maps the Howey securities risk that aggressive royalty marketing invites. It closes with drafting-level guidance and a detailed FAQ. The refrain: code can execute, but code is not law.