Yuga Labs, the famous creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s NFT collection, has officially launched a lawsuit against concept artist Rydder Ripps. The latter is accused of having copied the famous NFTs of the Bored Ape Yacht Club.
It’s not just a monkey business. Remember, a few months ago, hundreds of small digital portraits of monkeys met with great success on the web. With their ultra-original Gorillaz-style look, these monkey NFTs continue to trade at gold prices on the market today. The collection of 10,000 non-fungible tokens is computer generated on the Ethereum blockchain.
This is one of the most popular collections on the market and several renowned artists such as Justin Bieber and Snoop Dog have made it popular. Knowing that a single piece in the collection costs an average of $103,000, there is at first glance nothing to worry about for the future of the company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club.
The facts are actually much more complicated than it seems since Yuga Labs has just launched a lawsuit against Rydder Ripps, a self-proclaimed concept artist accused of willfully copying BAYC’s NFTs.
Yuga Labs Files Complaint After Bored Ape Yach Club NFTs Are Stolen
A lawsuit has even just been filed in a Californian court this weekend. Ripps is accused of being the author of a scheme “calculated, intentional and voluntary” to damage the BAYC collection while promoting his own work.
The main source of the conflict comes from the concept artist’s RR/BAYC NFT series. This series of NFTs uses BAYC images but connects them to a different crypto token. A clever sleight of hand that allows Ryder Ripps to sell his works for the equivalent of $200 each, while
those of BAYC are around 100,000 dollars per unit.
Related: Nike Sold the NFT of a Shoe for $125,000
The lawsuit indicates that it is “a deliberate effort to harm Yuga Labs. All at the expense of consumers, by causing confusion as to whether these RR/BAYC NFTs are somehow affiliated with or connected to the official Yuga Labs BAYC.”
Accused of false advertising and trademark infringement, Ribbs defends himself by describing his work as a variant of appropriation art, notably exploring “the power of NFTs to change meaning, establish provenance and escape censorship ». The artist also said on Twitter that his buyers were explicitly told that they weren’t buying an official Bored Ape. One thing is certain, the battle has only just begun.
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