Ryder Ripps claims lawsuit over chained Ape NFTs is keeping him quiet – ARTnews.com

At the end of June last year, Yuga Labs, the parent company behind NFT projects Bored Ape Yacht Club and Crypto Punks, filed a lawsuit against artist Ryder Ripps, who had created his own NFT collection sharing images with the former. On Monday, Ripps’ legal team hit back, claiming the lawsuit was used to silence him through legal intimidation.

A lawsuit with that intention is known as SLAPP, which stands for strategic lawsuits against public participation. According to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, an anti-SLAPP motion is a request to have a case dismissed on the grounds that the case involves “speech about a matter of public concern.”

Ripps’ legal team claims the artist “used his craft to call out a multi-billion dollar company built on racist and neo-Nazi dog whistles.”

Yuga Labs declined to comment.

Since the beginning of 2022, Ripps, his partner Jeremy Cahen and ten John Does have led a viral campaign claiming that the founders of Yuga Labs have threaded alt-right images through their mega-successful NFT project Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Ripps published the research he and his team have compiled on the matter on a website called gordongoner.com. He has talked a lot about the matter on social media, and has done interviews with the press and internet personalities on the subject.

Yuga Labs has previously denied Ripps’ allegations of racism. But Yuga Labs filed suit only when Ripps came out with RR/BAYC, an NFT collection in which he recovered Bored Apes from the Yuga Labs collection and sold 9,500 of those NFTs for them for about $1.6 million in total.

Yuga Labs claims that this was a form of trademark infringement that threatened to mislead potential customers. Notably absent from the lawsuit were any claims of defamation, although the lawsuit repeatedly mentioned Ripps’ “campaign of harassment based on false accusations of racism.”

Ripps and Cahen’s lawyers argue that the use of BAYC images is a form of appropriation and that Ripps did not intend to trick potential BAYC customers into buying his own NFTs.

The RR/BAYC team wrote on their website that RR/BAYC was a work of art whose goal was to use “satire and appropriation to protest and educate people regarding The Bored Ape Yacht Club and the framework of the NFTs.”

Ripps and Cahen’s motion to dismiss explains that their use of appropriation art specifically served several purposes: “(1) to bring attention to Yuga’s use of racist and neo-Nazi messages and imagery, (2) to expose Yuga’s use of unwitting celebrities and popular brands for to spread offensive material, (3) to create social pressure demanding that Yuga take responsibility for his actions, and (4) to educate the public about the technical nature and usefulness of NFTs.”

In an emailed statement, Louis Tompros of WilmerHale, an attorney for Ripps and Cahen, said they would seek attorneys’ fees and costs.