Yuga Labs, the company behind the successful Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC) NFT collection, has been accused of using the collection’s logo without proper licensing or permission from its original creator. The likeness was first noticed by a Twitter user and later acknowledged by both Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano and the image’s original creator, Easy Drawing Tutorial.

Thanks for bringing this up @Jdotcolombo. @yugalabs 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.

— Easy Drawing Guides (@easydrawinguide) February 17, 2023

Yuga Labs launched the BAKC NFT collection in June 2021, and in November of the same year, applied for a trademark of its logo. However, it was discovered that the logo bears a striking resemblance to a wolf skull image that was posted on Easy Drawing Tutorial’s official Twitter account three months prior to the launch of BAKC, in April 2021.

Easy Drawing Tutorial is a platform that offers step-by-step instructions for creating cartoonish drawings of various animals and objects, aimed at people who may not have traditional artistic skills. Its terms and conditions explicitly prohibit commercial use of its proprietary content.

According to Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano, the company hired a freelancer to create the BAKC logo. They have now contacted both the freelancer and Easy Drawing Tutorials as part of their investigation into the possible infringement of intellectual property.

Solano also stated that Yuga Labs will remove and replace the logo on the Bored Ape Kennel Club website and request marketplaces to do likewise.

Saw the claims today about the BAKC logo. This was news to us and we're still investigating the situation. Have reached out to the freelancer we hired for that design and Easy Drawing Guides. We’ll be changing the logo and updating it on our site / ask marketplaces to change as…

— Garga.eth (Greg Solano) (@CryptoGarga) February 18, 2023

Both Yuga Labs and Easy Drawing Guides declined further comment.

Yuga Labs’ success in the NFT market

Despite this controversy, Yuga Labs’ NFT collections have seen tremendous success in the market.

Yuga Labs’ BAKC NFT collection was released for free to wallets holding a Bored Ape. The purpose was to raise funds for animal charities, and the collection reportedly raised over $1 million.

However, Yuga Labs has been profiting from the BAKC collection since around August 2021. The project’s website reveals that only the first six weeks of secondary sales featured a 2.5% royalty fee donated to charity.

Yuga Labs has created several other NFT collections, including the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club. The Bored Ape Yacht Club collection has a market cap of over $1.2 billion, and the Mutant Ape Yacht Club has a market cap of roughly $500 million.

In November, a leaked Yuga Labs pitch deck revealed a net revenue of $127 million in 2021 and a budgeted net revenue of $455 million in 2022.

While it remains to be seen how this controversy will affect Yuga Labs’ future endeavors, it is clear that their NFT collections have taken the crypto world by storm with their unique designs and charitable contributions.