NFT Artists React to Allegations After Yuga Labs Lawsuit

With regard to several trademark-related claims under the Lanham Act, among other things, Yuga Labs sued Ripps and his business partner.

Yuga Labs is suing the NFT artist and his business partner. They are the infamous Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT creators, and they are accused of producing "copycat" replicas of their NFT collection.

In June, Yuga Labs filed a lawsuit.

Yuga sued Jeremy Cohen, the creator of Not Larva Labs, and artist Ryder Ripps in June. However, they claimed that they had cloned their NFT collections and diminished the worth of the genuine Bored Ape goods. In their response to the complaint, the two have disputed several of the allegations.

In their court document from December 27, Yuga Labs asserts that every single one of these NFTs is an entry on a decentralized digital ledger and wholly unique by design, making them both non-fungible and uncopyable.

The RR/BAYC collection, created by Ripps and Cahen, does not infringe on Yuga Labs' copyright, they claim. They also claim to have "applied conceptual art to challenge hateful imagery" that Yuga Labs had been employing.

The NFT maker's move to dismiss was rejected earlier in December by the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

NFT makers are also sued

Also being sued is BAYC on a different front. The California law firm Scott + Scott sued Yuga in a class-action lawsuit. However, nearly 40 other individuals and companies were accused of being a part of "a huge scam" involving covert celebrity sponsorships of products like BAYC. This was denied by a Yuga spokesperson.

Why this case matters

The Labs case highlights how important it is to understand the technology underpinning IP claims in cases involving NFTs. By going behind the scenes, the court was able to establish that the digital assets referenced by Ripps' RR/BAYC NFTs and Yuga Labs' BAYC NFTs were identical. This intricacy allowed the court to rightly determine that Ripps' NFTs were nothing more than a collection of forgeries and did not pass the Rogers test as an artistic medium.