It appears that the logo of the Yuga Labs-owned Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC) NFT collection was used without license or permission from the artist. First noticed by an eagle eye Twitter user on Friday, the likeness was subsequently acknowledged by both the image’s original creator, Easy Drawing Tutorial, and Yuga Labs’ co-founder Greg Solano (“Gargamel” before his identity was revealed one year ago.)
Yuga Labs released the BAKC collection in June 2021 and beyond used on the trademark its logo in November, but Easy Drawing Tutorial’s official Twitter had posted a picture of a almost identical wolf skull three months earlier, in April 2021.
Easy Drawing Tutorial is a resource that provides “non-artists” step-by-step instructions for creating cartoon drawings of various animals and objects.
There is explicit language in Easy Drawing Tutorials’ Terms and conditions which prohibits commercial use of the proprietary content.
According to Solano, Yuga Labs had hired a freelancer to create the logo’s design, adding that Yuga Labs has contacted both the freelancer in question and Easy Drawing Tutorials as part of its investigation into the alleged copyright infringement.
Solano also stated that the logo would be removed and replaced on the project’s website and that Yuga Labs would ask marketplaces to do the same.
Both Yuga Labs and Easy Drawing Guides declined Decrypt their request for further comment.
Yuga’s NFT market success
The Bored Ape Kennel Club NFT collection was released free to any wallet containing a Bored Ape. Solana stated that “from the start the fundraiser was meant to be about raising money for charity,” and that it had raised more than $1 million for the charity.
But according to the project’s websitethe 2.5% royalty fee on secondary sales from the first six weeks will be donated, meaning Yuga Labs has been making money from the BAKC collection since approximately August 2021.
With a market value of over 115 million dollarsThe BAKC collection is one of several NFT collections created and sold by Yuga Labs – most notably the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection, which has a market value of over 1.2 billion dollarsand the Mutant Ape Yacht Club, with an approx 500 million dollars market cap, per CoinGecko.
A Yuga Labs pitch tires which was leaked in November reveals that the company had net income of $127 million in 2021 and a budgeted net income of $455 million in 2022.
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