Even though Yuga Labs has a market cap of over $115 million, it looks like the Bored Ape Kennel Club logo was made without a license.
It looks like the logo of the Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC) NFT collection, which is owned by Yuga Labs, was used without a license or the artist’s permission.
Friday, a eagle-eyed Twitter user was the first to notice the similarity. The image’s original creator, Easy Drawing Tutorial, and Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano then confirmed it.
Bro @BoredApeYC @yugalabs what a fucking joke bahahahahaha you got some explaining to do. 4/5/21 and your kennels came out 6/21 and you went and trademarked this skull. Are you guys ok or have you bumped your heads? https://t.co/HiLFdbnFL5 pic.twitter.com/FJigzJgBr8
— COLOMBO (@Jdotcolombo) February 17, 2023
Yuga Labs released the BAKC collection in June 2021 and then tried to trademark its logo in November. However, Easy Drawing Tutorial’s official Twitter had posted an image of a nearly identical wolf skull three months earlier, in April 2021.
Easy Drawing Tutorial is a resource that provides “non-artists” step-by-step instructions to create cartoonish drawings of many animals and objects.
The rules and conditions of Easy Drawing Tutorials expressly forbid the commercial usage of its proprietary content.
According to Solano, Yuga Labs employed a freelancer to develop the logo, and the company has contacted both the freelancer and Easy Drawing Tutorials as part of its investigation into the alleged intellectual property violation.
Solano added that the logo would be removed and replaced from the project’s website and that Yuga Labs would request the same of marketplaces.
Saw the claims today about the BAKC logo. This was news to us and we're still investigating the situation. Have reached out to the freelancer we hired for that design and Easy Drawing Guides. We’ll be changing the logo and updating it on our site / ask marketplaces to change as… https://t.co/OwtflDXehz
— Garga.eth (Greg Solano) (@CryptoGarga) February 18, 2023
Yuga’s success on the NFT market
The Bored Ape Kennel Club NFT collection was made available for free to anyone with a Bored Ape in their wallet. Solano said that the goal of the collection was always to raise money for charity and that more than $1 million had been raised for animal charities.
But according to the project’s website, the 2.5% royalty fee on secondary sales from only the first six weeks would be donated. This means that Yuga Labs has been profiting off the BAKC collection since about August 2021.
The BAKC collection is one of several NFT collections made by Yuga Labs. The Bored Ape Yacht Club collection has a market cap of more than $1.2 billion, and the Mutant Ape Yacht Club collection has a market cap of about $500 million, according to CoinGecko.
A Yuga Labs pitch deck that was leaked in November discloses that the firm generated $127 million in net revenue in 2021 and is projected to earn $455 million in net revenue in 2022.
Content Source: decrypt.com
Cover Image Source: news.yahoo.com
