Yuga Labs to change Bored Ape Kennel Club logo after copyright claim

Yuga Labs Co-Founder, Greg Solano, announced on Feb. 18 that Bored Ape Kennel Club would change its logo following copyright allegations against the company related to images from Easy Drawing Guides, a learn-to-draw company.

Below is the BAKC logo alongside the Easy Drawing Guides image, illustrating the apparent similarities between the two. The BAKC logo is identical to the Easy Drawing Guide wolf skull and caused Solano to comment, “[I] saw the claims today about the BAKC logo. This was news to us, and we’re still investigating the situation.”

On Feb. 17, Easy Drawing guides declared that Yuga Labs does not have the license to utilize its “wolf skull drawing” for commercial use.

“Yuga Labs doesn’t have a license to the wolf skull drawing. The intellectual property rights for the drawing belong to Easy Drawing Guides as it’s our original drawing and protected by our Terms and Conditions.”

Following Solano’s statement, the BAYC OpenSea profile has already had the logo removed. He is reportedly in touch with Easy Drawing Guides and the artist who created the BAKC logo.

The BAKC NFTs were launched in June 2021 and given away free to BAYC holders, minus gas fees. According to Yuga Labs, royalties collected via secondary market sales were then designated to animal charities. Solano affirmed this position stating that “BAKC raised over $1m for animal charities” from royalties since inception.

Solano appeared to shift some of the blame for the logo onto a contractor hired to design it by remarking that he had “reached out to the freelancer we hired for that design.”

As of press time, BAKC is number four on the top trending list on OpenSea, with 3,185 ETH of volume over the past 24 hours. Furthermore, the project’s floor price soared to the highest level since Jan. 12, as it rose to 9 ETH.

It is unclear at this stage what the new logo may look like. However, Solano reiterated that “this collection was meant from the start to be about raising money for charity[…] will debut the new logo soon so we can continue to do some good work for causes we care about.”

This is not the first copyright battle that Yuga Labs has been at the center of, as it recentled battled with Ryder Ripps and RR developers over the use of BAYC imagery in the RR/BAYC collection.

The RR/BAYC collection was designed to highlight alleged racist imagery within Yuga Labs’ design. Lehman was the developer who coded the smart contract for the RR/BAYC project and settled his suit by stating, “I reject all disparaging statements about Yuga Labs and its founders and appreciate their positive contributions to the NFT space.”

The suit against Ryder Ripps is, however, still ongoing.