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James Carter

April 24, 2023

Bored Ape Yacht Club Copycats Dealt Legal Blow by US Court

Yuga Labs, the company that made the very popular non-fungible token (NFT) Bored Ape, just won its case against copycat Ryder Ripps. Documents from the court say that Yuga Labs has won on all points.

Yuga Labs Gets Summary Victory

Yuga Labs seems to have lost the court battle that started last summer.

Ryder Ripps and his group lost badly to the person who made the biggest non-fungible token (NFT) ecosystem, which includes the famous Bored Ape Yacht Club.

According to court records, Yuga Labs won its case against the people who made copies of its Bored Ape digital collectible by claiming that they were doing something illegal.

The US Northern District Court agreed with the prosecutor that Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen’s RRBAYC collection wasn’t just meant to point out problems with Yuga Labs’ NFT collection.

Instead, it was decided that the defendant’s use of the BAYC trademark was neither fair use nor artistic expression as stated.

The court also ruled in favor of Yuga Labs, saying that the copycats lied about where their products came from and that the defendant’s free speech claims did not hold up in this case.

Because of this, the court said that the RRBAYC NFT collection was evil, and the US District Court said that it was done to make money.

The court also said that the NFT marketplaces with the domain names apemarket.com and rrbayc.com were cybersquatting and that the likeness to the Bored Ape project could easily confuse the public.

The court sided with Yuga Labs because Ryder Ripps didn’t register the domain names until after the company started selling the BAYC NFT collection.

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The court also said that the offenders tried to intentionally misrepresent the BAYC collection by trying to make it look bad.

Since the court papers were made public, the NFT has been in a tizzy.

Ash Kernen, Esq., a lawyer for entertainment and intellectual property, says that Yuga Labs’ win is a knockout of the accused.

Bored Ape Yacht Club Copycats Dealt Legal Blow by US Court

The court’s ruling has also been praised by people who like the NFT.

But not everything went well for Yuga Labs. The makers of Otherdeeds must wait until the trial to file for damages, according to the court’s decision.

NFTs Are Goods and Not Securities

The recent infringement win that Yuga Labs claimed to have won seems to have answered worries that NFT investors had about a controversial topic.

The Northern District Court of California made it clear in the court paper that NFTs are goods and shouldn’t be treated like securities.

The court said that the defendant’s claim that the BAYC collection wasn’t a real thing didn’t change the fact that it was a real thing under the Lanham Act.

The court then said that NFTs were virtual things, not securities, so Ripps’s decision to talk about the project without getting permission from Yuga Labs was a huge legal mistake.

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Even though this might not seem like a big deal, supporters of the NFT have jumped on it, saying that the court’s ruling makes it clear whether or not these virtual collections are securities.

The team from Yuga Labs said that the summary ruling was a big win for the Web3 space.

This is a good sign for the project, whose sales have gone down over the last 90 days.

Since Ripps and his friends said that the collection had hidden Nazi symbols and that they were making fun of it, the project’s NFT fame has gone down around the world.

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