BAYC parent company Yuga Labs reaches a settlement with conceptual artist Ryder Ripps over trademark dispute

ME News update: On April 9 (UTC+8), Bored Ape Yacht Club developer Yuga Labs reached a settlement with concept artist Ryder Ripps and his business partner Jeremy Cahen over a long-running trademark dispute. According to court documents, the parties have agreed on case claims, but the settlement details have not been disclosed. Ripps has been formally barred from using Yuga Labs’ brand visual elements and trademarks in the future. Yuga sued Ripps and Cahen in 2022, alleging that the two used the same images and monkey characters as the original NFT collection to create a so-called satirical parody project. Ripps previously argued that his RR/BAYC project was “expressive appropriation art” and protected by the First Amendment, but in 2023 a federal court ruled that parody tokens could cause confusion in the NFT marketplace, infringing Yuga’s trademark rights, and ordered the two to pay nearly $9 million. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals later rejected most of Ripps’ fair-use arguments, overturned the fine ruling but confirmed that NFTs are protected under trademark law. (Source: PANews)