Bored Ape Yacht Club Copycats Dealt Legal Blow by US Court

cryptonews.com:

The hugely popular non-fungible token (NFT) maker of Bored Ape, Yuga Labs, has recently won its case against copycat Ryder Ripps. 

According to court documents, Yuga Labs is said to have won on all counts.

The legal tussle which began last summer seems to have turned in the face of Yuga Labs. 

The creator of the largest non-fungible token (NFT) ecosystem comprising the famous Bored Ape Yacht Club, recently won a landslide over Ryder Ripps and his cohorts.

According to court documents, Yuga Labs has won its case against the copycats of its Bored Ape digital collectible on the cause of infringement. 

The US Northern District Court agreed with the prosecutor's position that the RRBAYC collection created by Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen was not only intended to highlight irregularities in Yuga Labs' NFT collection. 

Instead, it was determined that the defendant's use of the BAYC trademark did not represent fair use or due artistic expression as claimed.

Not done there, the court also sided with Yuga Labs, ruling that the copycats committed false destination of origin and that the defendant's free speech claims were not tenable in this case. 

Given this, the court termed the RRBAYC NFT collection maliciously, and the US District Court said it was meant to profit.

The court also stated that the NFT marketplaces with the domain names apemarket.com and rrbayc.com were cybersquatting and that the apparent similarity to the Bored Ape project could easily lead to public confusion. 

The court's grounds for siding with Yuga Labs was that Ryder Ripps only registered the domain names after the company launched the BAYC NFT collection. 

The court also stated that the defendants tried to knowingly paint the BAYC collection in a bad light in a bid to