The creator of Bored Apes is suing conceptual artist to copy his NFTs

The company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club has sued concept artist Ryder Ripps for selling duplicates of its Bored Ape non-fungible tokens or NFTs. The lawsuit, which was filed in a California court this weekend, accuses Ripps of a “calculated, intentional and willful” plan to harm BAYC while promoting his own copying work.

Ripps and Yuga Labs have been at odds for several months, in part because of Ripps’ RR / BAYC NFT series. The series used BAYC images, but connected them with another crypto token and sold them for the equivalent of around $ 200 each, a bargain compared to real goods, which are currently selling for around $ 100,000 at the low end. “This is not just monkey business. It is a deliberate attempt to harm Yuga Labs at the expense of consumers by creating confusion as to whether these RR / BAYC NFTs are in any way sponsored, affiliated with or connected to Yuga Labs official Bored Ape Yacht Club », it is stated in the lawsuit.

The case accuses Ripps of false advertising and trademark infringement among other offenses. It is asking for financial compensation and a court order demanding that he stop violating BAYC’s work, including a ban on using “confusingly similar” domain names such as apemarket.com.

Ripps (who also sold original NFTs) described his work as a twist on the art of appropriation, which explores “the power of NFTs to change their minds, establish their origins and avoid censorship.” He has run similar projects before, including selling a slightly modified version of a CryptoPunk designed to play with the series. “The lawsuit grossly mischaracterizes the RR / BAYC project,” he said in a statement on Twitterand claimed that buyers were explicitly informed that they were not buying an official Bored Ape.

Yuga Labs rejects the claim that the work was a satirical comment. It portrays the work as part of a long-running vendetta against the company – which Ripps has claimed trolls his audience with racist references. Ripps has claimed that the BAYC series mentions frequent coded white words of superiority and symbols, including the creators’ pseudonyms, the BAYC logo and the decision to create human apes, which he claims is part of the broader racist tradition of comparing black humans to monkeys. Although he is not the only person to make these allegations, the Anti-Defamation League expressed doubts about his interpretations. Yuga Labs took up the theory earlier this year, calling it “deeply painful”, and co-founder Gordon Goner gave a lengthy refutation of Ripps’ claims in a blog post on Medium.

Ripps is far from Yuga’s only concern. BAYC has created an additional project with “metavers” that have supported the path to launch, and it is also affected by a major landslide in the cryptocurrency market. However, it has reached a level of fame most other NFT series do not have thanks to things like a recent music video from Eminem and Snoop Dogg promoting the artists’ Bored Apes.

Ripps’ work – among other copycat NFTs – has raised questions about how copyright law should apply to crypto art. And Ripps points to the fact that BAYC’s copyright terms seem somewhat confusing and contradictory. But this case does not accuse Ripps of copyright infringement. So instead of giving an early look at how the courts will deal with this issue, it will depend on factors such as whether Ripps legitimately confused people with their work – or whether people specifically bought into the project. because it was not BAYC.