Yuga Labs Accused of IP Theft for Trademarking the BAYC

Yuga labs are accused of the illegal use of the intellectual property on a website. To solve these types of situations, NFTs were introduced. Yuga Labs is basically accused of trademarking the drawing or artwork of a children’s website that posts drawings for children step by step. 

(BAYC) Bored Ape Yacht Club’s exemplary wolf skull logo has been illegally trademarked without proper licenses by none other than Yuga Labs’ nonfungible token (NFT). This image or artwork was originally released by a website that specializes in posting drawings and artwork in an easy way for children and adults. The website’s name is Easy Drawing Guides.

IP Theft for Trademarking

This problem of IP Theft tumbled upon the NFT artist and Crypto member @Jdotcolombo who saw the post of Easy Drawing Guides on 5 April 2021. The guide posted ‘an easy step-by-drawing tutorial’ for the skull of a wolf. This drawing was similar to the BAYC’s official logo which was revealed on 17th June 2021.

This raised the question if BAYC has illegally copied the artwork of Easy Drawing Guides. 

This question was answered when Easy Drawing Guides disclosed their confirmation that Yuga Labs illegally trademarked this artwork without any license.

Yuga labs stated that this unlicensed trademark was their own. In response, Easy Drawing Guides released their statement:

“The intellectual property rights for the drawing belong to Easy Drawing Guides as it’s our original drawing and protected by our Terms and Conditions.”

According to experts, Easy Drawing Guides’ Terms and Conditions permit a limited licensing license for the non-commercial, personal use of the website which is revocable, non-exclusive, and non-transferable.

Contrary to this, the supporters of BAYC believe that BAYC did not breach any intellectual property of Easy Drawing Guides while making the logo. Though, they believe that Easy Drawing Guides deserve some compensation. No response to Cointelegraph’s comment has been made by Yuga Labs.

This type of intellectual property problem is not new to Yuga Labs. These types of situations have occurred at Yuga Labs in the past as well. An opposition notice for about 10 trademark applications of Yuga Labs has been filed by one of the co-founders of RR/BAYC.

In the notice, against Yuga Labs’ filings, 

RR/BAYC’s co-founder Jeremy Cahen has highlighted a list of ”grounds for opposition” 

while claiming that this company has abandoned any rights that are related to any certain kind of logo and artwork designs due to BAYC NFT sales and this notice has granted all the rights of the artwork and the digital images to the rightful owners. Though, Yuga Labs has not responded to this notice and claim by the co-founder of RR/BAYC. To see the response of Yuga Labs, we will have to wait.