Yuga Labs, the company behind the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection, has revealed in a recent court filing that it does not possess ownership licenses for the collection's 10,000 photos. The revelation was made as part of Yuga's ongoing lawsuit against artist Ryder Ripps, who allegedly copied images from the BAYC collection in his own NFT work, known as RR/BAYC.
In June, Yuga Labs filed a lawsuit against Ripps, accusing him of deceptive advertising, trademark infringement, and unauthorized copying among other charges. Ripps has denied the allegations and claims that his intention was to draw attention to what he believes are alt-right and neo-Nazi symbols embedded in the BAYC NFTs and to question the notion that large NFT collections can be copyrighted.
Interestingly, Yuga has chosen not to sue Ripps on copyright infringement, with speculations ranging from a lack of copyright filings to a desire to avoid fair use or freedom of speech defenses.
During the NFT boom, Yuga Labs' creators had advertised that buying an NFT also included ownership rights, suggesting that BAYC NFT holders could produce merchandise such as t-shirts and TV shows featuring the image of the bored ape depicted in the NFT.
The copyright issue has attracted the attention of legal experts and popular media outlets, particularly after the "Green Ape" NFT was stolen, raising questions about whether the thief now held ownership rights to the image.
It appears that Yuga may be trying to avoid a ruling on whether large NFT collections can be copyrighted at all. The legal status of computer-generated or programmatically created works, such as the BAYC and other high-profile NFT sets, is currently unclear.
