In addition to the current lawsuit filed against Bored Ape Yacht Club and various celebrities about promoting BAYC NFTs, it appears that the famous Yuga Labs project is now facing another issue.

NFT creators Ryder Ripps and his business partner Jeremy Cahen have filed a countersuit against Yuga Labs and recently requested the court to declare that Bored Ape Yacht Club images are not entitled to copyright protection. For the reason that those images were generated through an automated computer algorithm, in which no one is involved in determining which of the 10,000 BAYC images were selected.

Yuga Labs claims that Ripp and Cahen were selling copycat NFTs to mislead consumers but the defendants insist that BAYC NFTs are unique and cannot be copied. In addition, they claim that Yuga Labs doesn’t have any copyright over the NFT images associated with BAYC based on its Terms and Conditions. The T&C states that BAYC NFT holders will retain all the property rights in their NFTs.

This is not the first time that Yuga Labs had an issue, in June, Ripp and Cahen were called out for spreading conspiracy theories and using them for selling knockoff NFTs. 

“Our lawsuit to hold Ripps and Cahen accountable for their obvious and blatant theft of Yuga Labs’ trademarks rightfully moves forward with this ruling.” – Yuga Labs

There’s a possibility that this lawsuit will progress and have a trial and would likely set a precedent for the NFT ecosystem.