The company that created the NFTs”Fored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC)“case Ryder Waves for allegedly selling copies of famous monkeys without mushrooms. The startup accuses the artist of false advertising and trademark infringement, among other crimes.
HE Yuga Laboratories says the artist applied this scheme in a “calculated, deliberate, and premeditated” way. It would be “an intentional effort to harm Yuga Labs at the expense of consumers, creating confusion as to whether these RR/BAYC NFTs are in any way sponsored, affiliated or linked to the official Bored Ape Yacht Club.”
Ripps has reportedly used Bored Ape Yacht Club images from the “RR/BAYC” series by linking them to a different crypto token than the one Yuga Labs is using. Each NFT could have sold for around $200. For comparison, original BAYC images can be purchased for around $100,000 today – a huge difference when you look at the price charged by the render concept artist.
Yuga Labs seeks monetary damages and a court order demanding that Ripps stop violating BAYC’s work. It would also be banned from using “confusingly similar” domains with Bored Ape.
In his defense, Ripps said the project was “a distortion of the property art” and “largely mischaracterized the RR/BAYC project”. Ryser also mentioned that BAYC’s copyright terms seem a bit confusing and contradictory. According to him, buyers of the “copied” artwork were clearly told they were not original Yuga Labs NFTs.
Yuga Labs has denied the allegations and believes this is a form of revenge designed by Ripps in response to a longstanding dispute with the startup. The artist says it was created under Bored Ape. racist references and symbologies of white supremacy. Yuga co-founder Gordon Goner has already denied these accusations in a Medium post.
Source: Tec Mundo
