Just because its NFTs It lost much of its mainstream appealNot that the token creators are done fighting tooth and nail over the last scraps of past boom times. Late last week, a California judge ruled that silly, derivative and spam monkey yacht club non-fungible symbols enjoyed trademark protection. Unfortunately for quite a few NFT creators out there, this decision comes a long time after it was probably used in most projects.
last friday, California District Judge John Walter to rule in favor of BAYC maker Yuga Labs in its ongoing lawsuit against conceptual artist Ryder Ripps, arguing that dead-eyed NFTs featuring petrified monkeys on numerous occasions are trademarked because they “have specific consumer-driven uses and values.” The judge said at the time Yuga Labs has never registered a copyright On its monkeys, that protection is built into the build, and the company has done enough with NFTs to prove it owns that trademark.
last june, Ripps was sued by Yuga Labs in a rather bizarre lawsuit which claimed that the artist was “trolling” the NFT maker and was “scamming” consumers, claiming that “this isn’t just the work of a monkey.”
The judge also denied that there was any technical merit in Ripps’ imitation NFTs’, saying that selling RR/BAYC is “no more than selling a fake handbag.” This may be a reference to luxury bag maker Birkin, who He won a trademark lawsuit against the makers of the “MetaBirkins” NFT suite. Walter also ruled in Yuga’s favor saying that Ripps was racking up a BAYC website using his RR/BAYC.com.
The amount Ripps owed for damages will be determined at a later trial. Ripps’ attorneys alleged that the NFTs sold for about $1.6 million, and the creator himself claimed to have sold “over a million.” Bored monkey maker Ribbs and compatriot Jeremy Kahn first sued last year, saying that Ripps and co. With their RR/BAYC project stolen from Yuga Labs’ own designs. Ripps claimed that it was protected by fair use, and that his unsaid monkeys were a satire to “protest and educate people regarding the Bored Ape Yacht Club and the framework for NFTs.”
“This isn’t just a win for us, it’s a win for the entire web3 industry to hold scammers and forgers accountable,” a Yuga Labs spokesperson told Gizmodo in an email.
Perhaps the writing is on the wall for fake Ripps and NFTs. Earlier this year Yuga Labs Separate lawsuit settlement Against Thomas Lehmann, who coded the RR/BAYC website and the fake monkey smart contract. In a statement, Lehman denounced the project and said he had given whatever was left of RR/BAYC to Yuga Labs for “destruction.” Of course, this ignores how crypto-hardliners still claim that all content on the blockchain is “Fixed“But let’s move on.
In an emailed statement, Ripps and Cahen’s attorney Louis Tombros said, “Mr. Ripps and Mr. Cahen stand by their view that the RR/BAYC art project is protected by the First Amendment and that Yuga does not have valid, enforceable trademarks in NFTs. We expect an appeal.”
Rippes himself did not take the news lying down. On Monday, he tweeted complaining about the judge’s decision.
Although if Ripps’ true intention was to show the excesses of NFT creators, it seems Time has already done that for Bayc. according to Queen Gekkothe price of bored monkeys has been steadily declining from its highs in April 2022. Although NFTs gained some momentum in February and March, data from Dune analytics The most popular trading sites show that NFT trading volumes have decreased a lot so far in April this year.
(tags for translation) Natural Sciences