Yuga Labs Faces Intellectual Property Theft Charges

The NFTs with the wolf skull logo were introduced with the purpose of protecting the intellectual property of the creators and to combat illegal use. Ironically, these are now exactly the accusations Yuga Labs is currently facing.

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The iconic wolf skull logo, the main NFT of Yuga Labs' Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection, was likely illegally trademarked without proper licensing. The image was originally intended to be published by a company that focuses on drawing tutorials for children and beginners.

An NFT artist posing on Twitter as @Jdotcolombo found a post dated 5th April 2021 in which Easy Drawing Guides posted "How to easily draw a wolf skull."

The image created was very similar to the BAYC logo, which has raised suspicions of illegal activity, especially as the launch of the BAYC Kennel Club NFT collectible did not occur until 17th June 2021.

Easy Drawing Guides responded to the whole affair by confirming that Yuga Labs does not own any license to the wolf skull image. Yuga Labs have gone so far as to trademark the logo as their property.

Easy Drawing Guides stated, "The intellectual property rights in the drawing belong to Easy Drawing Guides as it is our original drawing and is protected by our terms and conditions."

Under Easy Drawing Guides' terms and conditions, they state that they grant a non-transferable, non-exclusive, revocable, limited license to use and access the website solely for personal, non-commercial use.

The community is divided on the case between those who do not consider the use of the logo to be a violation of the terms of the intellectual property, and those who think that it is. However, the majority think that Easy Drawing Guides deserves some sort of financial compensation.

This intellectual property dilemma is nothing new for Yuga Labs. In fact, the co-founder of the BAYC imitation collection has filed a total of ten oppositions to Yuga Labs' trademark applications.

In the notice, Jeremy Cahen, who co-founded RR/BAYC, published a list of "grounds for objection" to Yuga Labs' trademark filings, saying the company had "relinquished any rights" to specific logo designs and artwork as a result of the sale to NFT BAYC, which granted "all rights" to the digital creations to their owners.

Source: cointelegraph.com