In Yuga Labs vs. Ryder Ripps, an appeals court rules that NFTs are “goods” that can get trademark protection but sends the case back to a lower court
- The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a mixed ruling in the longstanding case between Yuga Labs, creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club …
Context & Ripple Effects
The dispute follows a California ruling that RR/BAYC tokens infringed BAYC trademarks, a prior win for Yuga that is now subject to further lower-court proceedings after the Ninth Circuit’s mixed decision.
The ruling also arrives after Yuga said the SEC had closed its investigation without action, reinforcing that NFT projects have faced overlapping questions about both IP ownership and legal classification.
First-order effects
- Yuga and Ryder Ripps return to the lower court for the unresolved issues in their trademark dispute; the appellate ruling does not end the case.
- NFT creators and alleged imitators in the Ninth Circuit gain appellate support for treating NFTs as trademark-protectable goods, rather than assuming their digital format removes them from conventional trademark analysis.
Second-order effects
- Rights holders can point to the decision when challenging NFT collections that use confusingly similar branding, while defendants will have to focus more sharply on the remaining infringement and expressive-use questions rather than contesting whether NFTs can be goods at all.
- The result gives marketplaces, creators and brand-license partners a clearer reason to treat collection names, visual identifiers and provenance claims as trademark-risk areas, particularly after the earlier California trademark finding involving RR/BAYC.
Third-order effects
- If other courts follow this approach, NFT-brand disputes may increasingly be handled through established trademark doctrine instead of requiring a separate legal framework for tokens.
- The remand shows that classification alone will not resolve copycat disputes: the long-term boundary will depend on how courts apply trademark tests to digital works that also claim artistic or satirical expression.
The trend: NFTs are being folded into existing intellectual-property law, even as courts continue to define how conventional trademark rules apply to expressive digital assets.