According to a Yuga Labs official who played down the significance of the opposition notice, the RR/Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) co-founders are allegedly just trying to stir up trouble.
Yuga Labs trademark registrations are object of opposition
Ten Yuga Labs trademark registrations have been the subject of opposition notices issued by one of the creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club’s RR/BAYC Collection of Imitation NFTs.
The decision marks another peculiar twist in the ongoing legal dispute over intellectual property between RR/BAYC founder Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen, and BAYC inventors Yuga Labs.
On February 9, Cahen filed an opposition warning before the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. At the time of writing this report, the opposition status of each trademark registration was “pending”.
Yuga Labs’ trademark applications, filed primarily in the second half of 2021, cover a variety of BAYC logos, images, and marks for prospective use on digital items such as NFT-based artwork, trading cards, and wearable devices. for Metaverse. .
Along with entertainment services such as games, television and music, the documents also mention the potential for tangible BAYC products such as clothing, jewelry, watches and key chains.
The probability that Cahen’s challenge will succeed is remote.
According to a Yuga Labs spokeswoman who spoke with bloomberg law on February 11, there is little chance that Cahen’s challenge will succeed and that the action is just another attempt to create difficulties for the company.
“The Trademark Office has preliminarily approved Yuga Labs’ trademark applications. We look forward to full approval in due course.”
Yuga Labs Spokesperson
Cahen outlines many “reasons for disagreement” with Yuga Labs’ submissions in the notice.
Furthermore, it claims that Yuga Labs does not have the legal right to specific skull designs because the company allegedly transferred ownership to ApeCoin’s decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) in March 2022.
In the middle of last year, digital artists Ryder Ripps and Cahen sued Yuga Labs for using BAYC artwork in the RR/BAYC collection. The company also claimed that the two were “trolling Yuga Labs and deliberately misleading consumers” into buying their knockoff NFTs.
Additionally, Cahen’s action comes just three days after Yuga Labs settled a separate lawsuit against Thomas Lehman, the creator of the RR/BAYC website and smart contracts.
Lehman agreed to a permanent injunction as part of the settlement barring it from working on any “confusingly comparable” BAYC-related initiatives. Lehman also resigned from Ryder Ripp and Cahen in a statement.
