Ryder Ripps, Jeremy Cahen and Yuga Labs Settle Bored Ape Yacht Club Lawsuit

Summary

• Artists Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen have finalized a settlement with Yuga Labs, ending a multi-year legal battle over the Bored Ape Yacht Club trademark
• The agreement requires the defendants to relinquish control of all RR/BAYC smart contracts, domains, and social media accounts to the NFT creator
• The settlement follows an appeals court decision that had previously overturned a $9 million judgment and ordered a jury trial to resolve the dispute

Conceptual artist Ryder Ripps and his associate Jeremy Cahen have officially reached a final settlement with Yuga Labs, the powerhouse company behind the culturally ubiquitous Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection. The resolution firmly brings an end to a high-profile trademark infringement case that first ignited in 2022. During that period, the creative pair launched the RR/BAYC collection, an alternative project which boldly utilized identical digital imagery to the original Bored Ape non-fungible tokens. Ripps and Cahen vehemently argued their controversial project functioned as a satirical work of conceptual art, actively protected by the First Amendment. However, a federal district court initially ruled in favor of the original creators, effectively determining that the mirror-image artwork generated genuine consumer confusion in the digital marketplace.

Under the strict terms of the newly finalized settlement agreement, both Ripps and Cahen are permanently enjoined from utilizing any BAYC trademarks or associated imagery moving forward. The legally binding document imposes a rapid timeline on the defendants to clean up the ecosystem. Within 10 days of the finalized order, the artists must transfer all associated smart contracts, targeted website domains, and remaining NFTs directly linked to the RR/BAYC project over to the plaintiffs for permanent destruction. The sweeping directive essentially erases the derivative project from the blockchain entirely, reasserting Yuga Labs’ dominance over the contested digital assets.

This definitive conclusion arrives after a rollercoaster timeline of judicial rulings surrounding the Web3 space. While a previous 2024 court judgment had aggressively ordered the conceptual artists to pay nearly $9 million in statutory damages and legal fees, that specific ruling was later partially overturned on appeal. This shift allowed Yuga Labs and the defendants to reach the current negotiated resolution, sidestepping what would have been a drawn-out jury trial. Legal experts and blockchain builders alike view this complex dispute as a landmark precedent for the modern application of traditional intellectual property law to decentralized digital assets, establishing clear boundaries for artistic expression and copyright protection across decentralized media.