A U.S. appeals court has reversed a $9 million verdict awarded to Yuga Labs in its trademark dispute with artist Ryder Ripps and his business partner Jeremy Cahen, reshaping the legal framework for non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Yuga Labs failed to conclusively demonstrate that Ripps’ NFT collection—entitled “Ryder Ripps Bored Ape Yacht Club”—caused consumer confusion, a critical threshold for trademark infringement claims. The case has been sent back to a California federal court for a trial on allegations of trademark infringement and cybersquatting [1].
The lawsuit, initiated in 2022, centered on whether Ripps’ NFTs constituted a direct copy of Yuga’s flagship Bored Ape Yacht Club collection. Yuga argued that the similarity in naming and design would mislead consumers, while Ripps defended his work as a satirical critique of “racist imagery” allegedly present in…
