Yuga Labs, the organization behind the well-known Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection, has won a legal victory in the form of a partial summary judgment in its action against Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen from a U.S. court in California. The RR/BAYC NFT collection, created ...
Yuga Labs, the organization behind the well-known Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection, has won a legal victory in the form of a partial summary judgment in its action against Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen from a U.S. court in California.
Yuga Labs vs Ripps
Yuga filed a lawsuit in June 2022, claiming that Ripps and his accomplices were intentionally confusing consumers while pretending to be satire, making millions of dollars in unfair profits, and taking joy in the harm their accusations had done to the BAYC.
Additionally, the court determined that because Yuga’s BAYC marks were well-known in the industry and the RR/BAYC project was meant to mislead, the defendants’ use of the BAYC marks did not qualify as either fair use or an artistic expression under something known as the Rogers Test.
The judge concluded that the defendant’s actions are motivated by a malicious intent to profit and that the two are engaging in cybersquatting. The court also found that the domain names rrbayc.com and apemarket.com that the defendants registered and used have the potential to cause confusion.