According to Decrypt, a U.S. District Judge in California issued a judgment on Wednesday in favor of Yuga Labs, creators of the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club, against Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen, awarding Yuga Labs over $1.5 million in damages. The court stated that Ripps and Cahen made profits from the sale of Ryder Ripps Bored Ape Yacht Club, which infringed on Yuga Labs' trademark. The defendants argued that their use of Yuga's BAYC trademarks was not infringement but 'satire' and 'parody.'
The judge granted Yuga Labs' request for the defendants to pay $200,000 in damages for cybersquatting violations, $100,000 per domain, and issued a permanent injunction against the defendants. The court denied Ripps and Cahen's motion to dismiss and granted Yuga Labs a summary judgment for trademark infringement and cybersquatting claims. Cybersquatting refers to registering a domain name of a well-known company or brand with the intent to sell it for a later profit. Court documents pointed to rrbayc.com and apemarket.com as the domain names in question.
The court also dismissed the defendants' counterclaim that Yuga Labs made false accusations of infringement and used racist and neo-Nazi imagery in its BAYC NFTs. The court ruled that Ripps and Cahen did not have a good faith reason for prior use of the domains because they registered the domains after Yuga had already launched the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs collection. Launched in April 2021, the Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 randomly generated NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are cryptographically unique tokens linked to digital and physical content, providing proof of ownership. In addition to joining an exclusive community, Bored Ape Yacht Club holders are given unlimited copyright to use their apes in their media or designs.
