A California judge rules that the RR/BAYC NFTs, which feature primates in similar poses to the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, violate Yuga Labs' BAYC trademarks
Context & Ripple Effects
The trademark ruling followed a closely related finding that the same RR/BAYC collection infringed Yuga's copyright, strengthening Yuga's challenge to a project built around visually and commercially adjacent ape NFTs. The earlier copyright finding against RR/BAYC made the trademark question especially consequential for who could present a collection as connected to BAYC.
The case remained procedurally important rather than fully settled law: a later appeals ruling held NFTs can be trademark-protected goods but sent the dispute back to the lower court, and Yuga ultimately settled with Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen.
First-order effects
- Yuga Labs gains a court finding that RR/BAYC's use of BAYC-associated branding infringed its trademarks, reinforcing its claim to control the collection's commercial identity.
- RR/BAYC's creators face immediate legal exposure over the collection's branding and positioning, separate from the copyright finding involving the artwork.
Second-order effects
- NFT projects invoking recognizable collections through parody, imitation, or adjacent naming face greater pressure to distinguish their branding and marketing from the brands they reference.
- The case gives marketplaces and NFT buyers another reason to scrutinize purportedly unaffiliated derivative collections, though the later appellate remand shows the legal boundaries were not yet final.
Third-order effects
- The dispute points toward NFTs being treated less as a legal exception and more as branded commercial goods whose names, marketing, and provenance can be governed by established IP rules.
- If courts continue applying trademark doctrine to NFT collections, control over recognizable digital-collection brands may become a more durable competitive asset than the token format itself; the subsequent settlement leaves some doctrine unresolved.
The trend: NFT disputes are moving toward conventional intellectual-property enforcement, with brand identity and consumer confusion becoming central tests for derivative collections.