Yuga Labs accuses artist Ripps of false advertising
The new documents were sent in as part of the ongoing lawsuit between Yuga and the artist Ryder Ripps, who used images from the BAYC collection for his own NFT collection called RR/BAYC. "Counts 2 and 3 ask the Court to say that Yuga Labs does not own the copyright to the Bored Ape images," reads the document that Yuga Labs' lawyers sent to the court. "You don't need to register a copyright to own it, but you do need to if you want to sue over it. Yuga Labs does not have a registered copyright, so there is no immediate threat of a lawsuit for copyright infringement.
Yuga Labs sued Ripps in June of last year. Among other things, they accused him of false advertising, trademark infringement, and cybersquatting. Ripps has denied the claims, saying that he has been clear that the collection is meant to draw attention to his belief that the BAYC NFTs are filled with alt-right and neo-Nazi symbols and to challenge the idea that large PFP collections are protected by copyright. Also, Ripps and his lawyers have said that RR/BAYC is a form of appropriation art, which is a way for artists to share their ideas. But lawyers have pointed out that Yuga did not sue Ripps for copying his work. People have thought of several possible reasons, such as the lack of copyright registrations or the fact that Yuga didn't want Ripps to use a Fair Use/Freedom of Speech defense.
Yuga Labs claimed to own an NFT copyrighted the image
During the NFT boom, the creators of Yuga Labs were the first to offer a new perk. They said that if you owned an NFT, you also owned the copyright to the image, so if you owned a BAYC NFT, you could use the image of the Bored Ape that you owned to make anything from t-shirts to TV shows. Seth Green, a comedian, said that he was making a TV show about a Bored Ape he owned when, in May 2022, his Ape was stolen in a hack. During a Vee-Con panel, Green told Gary Vaynerchuck, "I bought that ape in July 2021, and I've spent the last few months developing and exploiting the IP to make it the star of this show." "He's taken away days before he's supposed to go out into the world for the first time." Legal publications, as well as entertainment and news magazines, were interested in the copyright perk. This was especially true after Green's Ape was stolen, which made people wonder if the thief now owned the IP rights to the Ape.
Do not register a copyright, does not mean that the company does not have any
Yuga Labs, on the other hand, said that its copyright over BAYC images is strong, even if the images are registered as copyrighted. "Not being registered with the federal government for copyright does not mean that an entity does not own copyright. "When provenance is documented, like with BAYC NFTs, copyright protection is automatic," a Yuga Labs representative told. Yuga also said that there is "no confusion" about the rights of people who own NFTs. "Yuga Labs has given holders of the BAYC, CryptoPunks, and Meebits NFT collections the rights to use the IP license and make money from it. "Yuga owns the rights to the artwork," the company's spokesperson said.
Yuga does not own any copyrights
Yuga told the court that it doesn't have any copyright registrations for the images, which may seem strange. However, Ripps filed a counterclaim asking the court to say that Yuga Labs didn't have any copyrights, which he thought was important to his defense strategy. Yuga Labs then put in a motion to have this counterclaim thrown out. "Yuga's argument to the court was, 'We brought an action for trademark infringement, not for copyright infringement, so it is not right for the court to reach out and decide whether or not we have copyright rights,'" Van Loon said.
Yuga seems to be trying to avoid the court's decision on whether or not large collections of NFTs can be protected by copyright. Legally, it is not clear if copyright applies to computer-generated works or works that are made by a process, like BAYC and other large collections of profile pictures made by NFT. Erica Van Loon, a partner and IP trial lawyer with the law firm Nixon Peabody, told that if the courts decide that Yuga does not own the copyrights to BAYC images, that could cause legal problems for the company. "If the terms of service said something or if copyright was mentioned when the NFTs were for sale, that could be a big problem for Yuga Labs," Van Loon said. "People who bought their NFTs could sue them for things like false advertising and unfair competition, among other things."
Artist Claims Yuga Can't Own Copyright in Images They Didn't Create
Ripps has said that Yuga can't have the rights to the images because he made them. "Yuga Labs took their Terms of Service from Suum Cuique labs, used a trendy (in the world of 2021 NFT scams) lie when they launched and tried to convince people that the value of NFT was being able to own Copyright, but computer-generated content can't be sued for copyright," Ripps said in an email, referring to Suum Cuique labs, whose name he says comes from a Nazi phrase that means "to each his own." "The ape pictures are all too similar, which makes it harder to give 10,000 copyrights to very similar pictures, some of which are of the same apes," he said.
Jean Dubreil