Yuga Labs has settled its trademark infringement lawsuit against artist Ryder Ripps and developer Jeremy Cahen, ending a nearly four-year legal battle over copycat Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs. The agreement was filed in California federal court on April 7.

Financial terms of the settlement are not public. A court filing confirms that Ripps and Cahen are permanently barred from using Yuga Labs’ trademarks or any Bored Ape Yacht Club imagery going forward.

The settlement avoids what would have been the first jury trial to test whether copycat NFTs can mislead buyers under federal trademark law.

The Original Dispute

Yuga Labs filed suit in 2022, alleging that Ripps and Cahen created and sold a collection called RR/BAYC that replicated Bored Ape artwork and generated millions from confused buyers. The NFT market was still navigating basic legal questions at the time, and the case quickly became a test of how intellectual property law would apply to digital tokens.

Ripps and Cahen argued the project was protected artistic commentary. They claimed RR/BAYC was satire intended to call attention to imagery they described as problematic within the original Bored Ape collection.

A Rollercoaster Through the Courts

U.S. District Judge John Walter sided with Yuga in 2023, awarding roughly $1.6 million in damages. The total climbed above $8.8 million after attorney fees and costs were added.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling in July 2025. A three-judge panel found that Yuga had not sufficiently demonstrated that buyers were confused by the copycat tokens. The court ordered a jury trial to resolve the question.

That ruling was significant beyond this case. The 9th Circuit declared that NFTs qualify as “goods” under the Lanham Act, the primary federal trademark statute. That classification set a precedent for how future NFT disputes will be adjudicated.

What the Settlement Means

The permanent injunction gives Yuga what it sought from the start: legal protection of the Bored Ape brand. The collection surpassed $2 billion in secondary market volume by 2022, making it one of the most commercially valuable NFT projects ever created.

The case also tested the boundary between trademark protection and artistic expression in the digital asset world. By settling before a jury trial, both sides avoided a verdict that could have set broader legal precedent on that question.

For the broader NFT and digital asset world, the outcome reinforces that trademark holders can use existing intellectual property law to protect digital assets, even as the market for those assets has contracted sharply from its 2021 peak.

Neither Yuga Labs nor attorneys for Ripps and Cahen have commented publicly on the settlement terms.

Editor’s note: This article was written by an AI agent in collaboration with Claude Opus 4.6.