Is Yuga Labs Threatening Legal Action Against Their Own Bored Apes?
Is Yuga Labs Threatening Legal Action Against Their Own Bored Apes?
Joey Colombo has been with the Bored Ape Yacht Club from the start. Why is Yuga Labs claiming that his artwork violates their intellectual property rights?
“Yuga Labs is trying to sue me,” longtime Bored Ape holder Joey Colombo wrote on Twitter last Thursday, February 16th.
The previous day, Colombo reported that he received threats of legal action from Yuga Labs in response to a work he previously sold on Manifold titled “Boring Skull.”
Featuring Colombo’s signature aesthetic, “Boring Skull” is a physical work of art composed from various world currencies. The paper currencies are hand cut and arranged into a collage that forms the Bored Ape skull. The description of the piece includes a short meditation on mortality and existence.
According to the legal notice shared on Twitter by Colombo, Yuga’s team claims that his “Boring Skull” NFT violates Yuga’s intellectual property rights. Colombo shared the message via a long tweet of copy-and-pasted text. (Locate my full screenshot of Colombo’s post at the bottom of this article.)
The message states that in order for Yuga to “consider this issue amicably resolved,” Colombo would be required to cease promotion and sale of the “Boring Skull,” request that all secondary marketplaces de-list the skull, and donate all of the proceeds generated from the sale.
Except that Colombo contends that he does, in fact, own the rights to the skull.
On their website, Yuga Labs explains that members/investors of the Club are granted “an unlimited, worldwide license to use, copy, and display the purchased Art” for commercial use.
The Bored Ape terms and conditions state: “When you purchase an NFT, you own the underlying Bored Ape, the Art, completely.”
Yuga Labs officials have repeatedly clarified that Kennel Club NFT owners also “own the BAKC IP” in the same manner. BAKC holders own commercial licenses to the underlying artwork — just like Bored Ape holders own the IP for their Apes.
“All of those IP rights are actually granted to the member and to the owner,” Nicole Muniz, CEO of Yuga Labs, explained at Web Summit in 2022. “We have none of those rights.”
Colombo emphasized that his artwork follows the rules laid out by Yuga Labs. He owns a Bored Ape Kennel Club NFT with the skull in question pictured on the brim of the hat.
Given that Colombo’s BAKC token visibly includes the Ape skull, it would seem to follow that he owns commercial rights to use the skull, considering that he owns the underlying art “completely.”
Yet, if leveraging the underlying artwork results in legal action, it raises questions about narratives driven by Yuga regarding their “unlimited” commercial license.
When contacted, Yuga Labs did not provide an explanation to resolve this contradiction.
Freedom of Artistic Expression
Some Bored Ape holders argued against Colombo, citing a post on Discord from founder Wylie Aronow.
Aronow, also known as “Gordon Goner,” posted a Discord message in June 2021, months after the launch of Bored Apes. He wrote: “just because our logo may appear somewhere on your ape, that does not give you the right to use that logo.”
“Their terms and conditions on their own website are very clear. The post on Discord … does not supersede terms and conditions on the company's website,” Colombo pushed back against one Mutant Ape holder.
Colombo pointed out that Discord is a third-party website that requires an additional sign-up process, and therefore does not supersede the terms and conditions posted to the official Bored Ape website. Colombo emphasized that he followed the website’s terms and conditions.
The Bored Ape website has not updated its terms and conditions to reflect the contents of Aronow’s Discord statement.
“Before all of that,” added Colombo, “I have freedom of artistic expression.”
Fighting Your Own Family
Colombo made less than $5,000 from the sale of “Boring Skull.” What are the implications of burning one of your key contributors over such a small sum?
Colombo and his partner, Jackie Ayran, were major players in the Bored Ape Yacht Club from the project’s inception in 2021.
Colombo and Ayran minted and bought Bored Apes at launch. During BAYC’s meteoric rise, both were prominent members of the Bored Ape community, widely identifiable not just by their grinning Ape profile pictures, but also with their real life identities.
Colombo and Ayran were two of the club’s early cultural leaders whose talents lent artistic legitimacy to the Yacht Club. Over the years, they posted various artworks promoting and celebrating Bored Apes, modeled different BAYC merch releases, and documented the birth of their child on social media.
Their family played a key role in helping the Yacht Club to develop and promote their brand identity.
Even some of Yuga’s most ardent defenders had a tough time swallowing the company’s sudden action against its own community member.
NFTwap, a typically staunch defender of Yuga Labs, tweeted: “if they’re truly trying to foster a community, they need to respect and treat their core community LIKE A COMMUNITY. Seeing the cease and desist sent to [Colombo] on the timeline … they’re way too sue happy, willing to fight their own family … not okay.”
Meanwhile, there appears to be virtually zero possibility that Colombo’s work would create any consumer confusion in the marketplace, whereas many other projects directly imitate Yuga’s collections.
One example is cryptocurrency mogul Justin Sun’s BAYCTron collection, which claims to be an “homage” to the Yacht Club. The BAYCTron Apes appear essentially identical to Yuga’s Bored Apes.
BAYCTron has already traded millions of dollars in volume and continues to receive active promotion from the team as of this article’s publication.
Yuga Labs: the True Thieves of IP?
In an ironic twist of fate, just a couple days after the controversy with Colombo’s art erupted, Yuga Labs came under fire for their own careless regard of IP rights.
Yuga has been using stolen art.
On February 17, artist and editor A T Wilkinson identified a glaring issue with the BAKC collection: the collection’s logo appears to be taken directly from a children’s drawing guide.
Yuga’s Kennel Club logo was in use for almost two years on a collection that traded hundreds of millions of dollars in volume. The logo art was stripped directly from a step-by-step children’s drawing tutorial.
Posted in early April 2021, the Easy Drawing Guides wolf skull tutorial predates the launch of Yuga’s BAKC collection by three months. Yuga Labs applied to trademark the plagiarized skull logo in November 2021.
“It’s a bad look and pretty irresponsible,” admitted Bored Ape holder Bailey.
It also appears that Yuga’s “artist” opted to use a digital autotracer rather than manually follow the steps to draw the wolf skull.
Easy Drawing Guides wrote on Twitter: “Yuga Labs doesn't have a license to the wolf skull drawing. The intellectual property rights for the drawing belong to Easy Drawing Guides as it's our original drawing and protected by our Terms and Conditions.”
Considering that Yuga Labs is presently engaged in trademark lawsuits, many remarked on the hypocritical optics of such careless infringement against a small artist.
Michael Eshaghian, a patent attorney who tweets commentary about web3, observed: “If it's true that Yuga Labs essentially stole its BAKC logo from a how-to-draw book, that is not a great look, [especially] in its ongoing trademark lawsuits against Ryder Ripps and Pauly [Jeremy Cahen].”
Rather than accept accountability for stealing from an independent artist, Yuga co-founder Greg Solano (also known as “Gargamel”) used the opportunity to pass off the blame to Yuga’s freelancer.
Referring to the situation as “claims,” Solano stated that this blatant IP theft was “news” and that Yuga is still investigating. He referenced the charitable donation affiliated with the collection, although users observed that the BAKC collection generated far greater revenues for Yuga Labs than it did for charity.
Cult Mentality?
Although Wilkinson identified Yuga’s IP theft, Colombo quickly realized the irony of the ordeal. He tagged Yuga Labs and Bored Apes on an image of the BAKC collection, commenting: “you got some explaining to do.”
That same day, Colombo appeared on a popular Twitter space to discuss the BAKC logo issue in relation to the threats he received from Yuga Labs. Some individuals who shared the stage downplayed the severity of these issues — or dismissed them entirely.
“Big companies sue small artists,” Yuga Labs investor Justin Blau (“3LAU”) spoke in response to Colombo. “How many times have we heard that story? It happens.”
During the same space, illaDaProducer, community and partnerships lead for Yuga Labs, idled silently on the stage, occasionally throwing up an emoji as the conversation unfolded.
“No one wants to discuss the fact that they’re stealing, but yet they’re going around throwing their lawyers at everybody,” Colombo spoke in a firm but calm tone.
Matt Medved was also onstage at the time. Medved is co-founder, CEO, and EIC of NFT Now, a media outlet that provides coverage and analysis of events, topics, and issues within the NFT community.
“Matt Medved, are you gonna write about this topic, or no?” asked Colombo.
Medved did not provide any verbal response, but tapped some “100” emojis as the space host reprimanded Colombo. Medved left the stage silently shortly afterwards.
To this date, NFT Now has not provided any coverage of either the situation with Colombo or Yuga’s plagiarized skull logo.
Medved did not respond to requests for comment.
Blau reiterated his public stance in private message, expressing that he thought the claim seems legitimate and “was just procedure.”
“I just thought [Colombo] was being a bit self-important making a big deal out of a legitimate legal claim as though it was the most important thing to talk about,” Blau wrote to me.
Blau stressed that it “seems to me like the whole situation is barely important.”
Offstage, other artists commended Colombo for defending his work and expressed disgust for the hypocrisy of Yuga’s approach.
Multidisciplinary artist Jake Osmun, based in New York and well known in the NFT community, described Bored Apes as “the antithesis of what the space represents for artists.”
Kevin Kelly and the press team at Yuga Labs did not offer any further clarification or acknowledgement of the legal notice that Colombo published on Twitter.
Colombo stated that he’s been in touch with legal representation and insists that his work is protected.
In a different Twitter space, Colombo spoke softly over the sound of a baby crying faintly in the background. He appealed to the protection of artists and called for introspection within the space.
“I’m experiencing this hivemind that I didn’t think existed,” he said. “For them to attack me … this is insane.”
See the full message posted by Colombo to Twitter on February 15, 2023:
