Bored Apes Creator Sues Conceptual Artist For Copying Its NFTs

The company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club has sued conceptual artist Ryder Ripps for selling duplicates of its Bored Ape non-fungible tokens or NFTs. From a report: The lawsuit, filed in a California court this weekend, accuses Ripps of a "calculated, intentional, and willful" scheme to damage BAYC while promoting his own copycat work. Ripps and Yuga Labs have been at odds for months, in part because of Ripps' RR/BAYC NFT series. The series used BAYC images but connected them with a different crypto token and sold them for the equivalent of around $200 apiece, a bargain compared to the real thing, which currently sell for around $100,000 on the low end. "This is no mere monkey business. It is a deliberate effort to harm Yuga Labs at the expense of consumers by sowing confusion about whether these RR/BAYC NFTs are in some way sponsored, affiliated, or connected to Yuga Labs' official Bored Ape Yacht Club," says the lawsuit. The suit accuses Ripps of false advertising and trademark infringement among other offenses. It asks for financial damages and a court order demanding he cease infringing on BAYC's work, including a ban on using "confusingly similar" domain names like apemarket.com.

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