Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen file a counterclaim against Yuga Labs

A counterclaim has been filed by Ryder Ripps along with his partner, Jeremy Cahen. This comes in the middle of the ongoing case, which was started by Yuga Labs, saying that Ryder Ripps has infringed copyrights to mislead the community into buying NFTs from their projects.

It caused difficulty because the value of the original art fell, resulting in a loss for the Bored Ape collectibles.

Ripps and Cahen were called out by Yuga Labs in late June 2022 for spreading ridiculous theories on the internet to sell the knockoff NFTs. This followed a video that was published on YouTube by Phillion on June 20, accusing Yuga Labs of promoting neo-nazi and alt-right imagery.  The founders have denied any such claim and have moved on to look into the matter that has come to light due to Ripps and his partner.

The RR/BAYC project soon issued a clarification, citing that their projects use satire and appropriation to educate people about the Bored Ape Yacht Club in addition to the framework of non-fungible tokens.

The counterclaim was filed on December 27. It says that every non-fungible token is an entry on a decentralized ledger and is entirely unique in terms of design. This makes them non-fungible and impossible to copy.

Ryder Ripps has been in a similar position before with re-minting non-fungible tokens. Ripps reportedly re-minted CryptoPunk #3100 in June 2021. He was then served with a Digital Millennium Copyright Act Notice from Larva Lab, which resulted in the delisting of the NFT.

Ripps followed this with a counterclaim to get his re-minted NFT relisted. It is worth noting that the original artwork was sold for $7.58 million in March 2021.

The ongoing counterclaim is something everyone in the community should keep an eye on as Ripps attempts to clarify the basic fundamentals of NFT properties. Ryder Ripps and his business partner, who also goes by the name Pauly0x, have asked the court to declare that BAYC images are not entitled to any type of copyright protection. The reason quoted is that an automated computer algorithm has generated the images without involving any humans.

This could further shed some light on the dispute between NFTs and copyright, which has been a matter of debate for a long time now.

Yuga Labs claims that both artists are attempting to mislead clients by selling a copycat NFT, but the opposing position states that this is false because NFTs cannot be replicated due to their unique design. In addition, the business partners argue that Yuga Labs does not properly own intellectual property rights because its terms and conditions say that only NFT holders own the rights.

A representative of Yuga Labs has come forward to state that Ripps and Cahen’s arguments are vile lies unconnected to the case.