NFT Bored Ape Kennel Club Logo Accused Of Plagiarism, This Is Yuga Labs' Response

Yuga Labs, a well-known NFT studio with the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and Bored Ape Kennel Club, faces allegations of copyright infringement related to the Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC) collection logo. The logo is thought to be a clone of an image created by Easy Drawing Tutorial, a website that provides a guide for drawing various cartoon characters.

This controversy began when a Twitter user named @Jdotcolombo highlighted the similarity between the BAKC logo and the image of the wolf skull posted by the official Easy Drawing Tutorial account in April 2021. He also pointed out that Yuga Labs had proposed a trademark for the logo in November 2021, although it did not have a license or approval from its original creator.

"Hi @yugalabs, did you get permission from @easydrawinguide to use their wolf skull image as the logo for the Bored Ape Kennel Club? You seem to have also proposed a trademark for him. That's not cool," wrote the account X @Jdotcolombo.

Easy Drawing Tutorial later confirmed that they are owners of intellectual property rights to the image and never gave Yuga Labs permission to use it. They also confirmed that their terms and conditions prohibit commercial use of their content.

"Thank you for highlighting this @Jdotcolombo. @yugalabs doesn't have a license to use this image of the wolf skull. The intellectual property rights to this image are owned by Easy Drawing Guides because this is our original image and is protected by our terms and conditions," replied @easydrawinguide.

Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano alias Garga.eth admitted that he did not know that the BAKC logo was the result of plagiarism. He claims that the logo was created by a freelancer hired by Yuga Labs and that his party had contacted the freelancer and Easy Drawing Tutorial to investigate the matter. He also promised to replace the logo and asked the NFT market to do the same.

Decrypt reports that both Yuga Labs and Easy Drawing Tutorial declined to provide further comment on this controversy. Decrypt also noted that the attacker had sold several stolen NFTs and had about USD 1.7 million (IDR 26.3 billion) in his wallet.

Yuga Labs is one of the most successful NFT studios in the world, with Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and Bored Ape Kennel Club having a combined market cap of more than $1.8 billion, according to data from CoinGecko.

The BAKC collection was released in June 2021 and offered free of charge to each Bored Ape holder, with the aim of raising charity funds for animals. However, Yuga Labs also benefited from royalties of 2.5% of BAKC's secondary sales, which lasted for the first six weeks.