A spokesperson for Yuga Labs said that the opposition notice doesn’t mean much and that the co-founder of RR/BAYC is just trying to make trouble.
One of the people who started the Bored Ape Yacht Club copycat NFT collection RR/BAYC has opposed Yuga Labs’ ten trademark applications.
In their long-running controversy over intellectual property, the people who made BAYC, Yuga Labs, and the people who made RR/BAYC, Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen, have taken yet another strange step.
Cahen sent the opposition notice to the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board on February 9. At the time this has been written, “pending” was the status for all trademark applications that were being opposed.
Jeremy Cahen’s filing distracts from BAYC logos, artwork, and branding
In the second half of 2021, Yuga Labs filed most of its trademark applications for BAYC logos, artwork, and branding that will be used in digital products like NFT-based art, trading cards, and Metaverse wearables.
The documents also talk about the possibilities for physical BAYC products like clothes, jewelry, watches, and keychains, as well as entertainment services like games, TV, and music.
In an interview with Bloomberg Law on February 11, a Yuga Labs spokesperson said that Cahen’s resistance wasn’t likely to work and that the move was just another attempt to cause trouble for the company.
“The Trademark Office has preliminarily approved Yuga Labs’ trademark applications for registration, and we look forward to their full approval in due course,” they said.
“Jeremy Cahen’s filing is just another attempt to distract from the real issue at hand, his infringement of the Yuga intellectual property.”
Cahen says that because BAYC NFT sales gave “all rights” to the owners of the digital photos, the company “abandoned any rights” to certain logo and artwork designs.
He also says that Yuga Labs is not the real owner of some skull designs because the company reportedly gave the rights to the ApeCoin decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) in March 2022.
Cahen also says that Yuga Labs failed to show in its filings that it had a “good faith intent to legitimately use” the trademarks. Under federal law, the NFTs should be registered and called securities.
BAYC designers Yuga Labs sued digital artist Ryder Ripps and Cahen in June because they used BAYC content in their RR/BAYC collection. The company also said that the two worked together to “troll Yuga Labs and trick customers” into buying their fake NFTs.
Cahen’s move comes just three days after Yuga Labs settled a separate lawsuit against Thomas Lehman, who made the RR/BAYC website and smart contracts.
As part of the settlement, Lehman agreed to a permanent injunction that keeps him from taking part in BAYC-related ventures that are “confusingly similar.” In a statement, Lehman tried to put himself apart from Ryder Ripp and Cahen.
Content Source: cointelegraph.com
