Yuga Labs has won the lawsuit against artist Ryder Ripps for his Copycat versions of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs
Law
The court found that Ripps and his partner had infringed the company’s trademark.
Yuga Labs, the blockchain company behind some of the most popular collectibles from the NFT boom, has won a lawsuit protecting the trademark of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT series.
On April 21, a federal court in California ruled in favor of Yuga Labs in the case against artist duo Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen. Back in mid-2022, Ripps and Cahen released the RR/BAYC NFT Collection which consisted of thousands of weird monkeys that looked eerily similar to those created in the wildly successful Yuga Labs project. RR/BAYC monkeys were cheaper than those sold by Yuga Labs, but used similar marketing materials.
Ripps and Cahen claimed to be satirizing Yuga Labs, but the company, in its lawsuit filed in June 2022, stated that the pair created confusion for consumers and deliberately aimed to harm the company.
The US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that RR/BAYC’s collection did not stand as artistic expression protected by the First Amendment, as Ripps and Cahen had argued, and that Yuga Labs was allowed to protect a trademarked product. It agreed with Yuga Labs’ view that RR/BAYC had deliberately attempted to mislead consumers, noting that the domains rrbayc.com and apemarket.com both contained BAYC branding, which it found “confusingly similar” to Yuga Labs’ branding .
“The court finds that the defendant acted in bad faith with the intent to make money,” said the ruling from US District Judge John Walter. “The RR/BAYC NFTs do not express an idea or point of view, but instead merely point to the same online digital images associated with the BAYC collection.”
Another blow to RR/BAYC was the rejection of the argument that Yuga Labs had transferred trademark rights to those who had purchased BAYC NFTs. The court pointed out that Yuga Labs’ terms and conditions, while allowing holders personal and commercial use, do not issue “a trademark license to use the BAYC Marks.”
At the time of writing, RR/BAYC had not responded to a request for comment.
This ruling comes after luxury brand Hermès won a legal victory over digital artist Mason Rothschild, creator of the NFT project MetaBirkins. Both suits have been closely watched in the crypto art space as potential bellwethers establishing the trademark rights of NFT companies and artists.
“We are thrilled with this win,” Yuga Labs told Artnet News. – This is not just a victory for us. It’s a win for the entire Web3 industry to hold fraudsters and counterfeiters accountable.”
The decision finds that Yuga Labs is entitled to damages, although it rejected the company’s push for “enhanced damages” of $200,000. The amount of damages will be decided at a later trial.
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