Here’s Why BAYC & Moonbirds May Have ‘Misled’ Holders On Their IP Rights!
Here’s why BAYC & Moonbirds may have ‘misled’ holders on their IP rights! With IP and copyright licenses being an important aspect of an NFT project, the issue of potentially misleading buyers with false IP rights has become a big topic in the community.
Galaxy Digitals’ Research
A recent research survey done by Galaxy Digital has brought attention to the idea that a number of NFT collections may or may not have potentially misled their holders on the actual IP rights they have on their NFTs.
The report, titled “A Survey of NFT Licenses: Facts & Fictions” published on August 19th focused on studying the copyright and IP rights issued by some of the biggest NFT collections, including Bored Ape Yacht Club, Moonbirds, World Of Women, CryptoPunks, Azuki, and others.
Issues With BAYC & Moonbirds
Galaxy Digital notes however, that 2 major discrepancies are found within Yuga Labs’ BAYC and Moonbirds’ NFTs IP rights statements.
“The license provided by Yuga to holders of BAYC, MAYC, and BAKC NFTs contains critical contradictions,” Galaxy Digital says, “Yuga Labs states that ‘when you purchase an NFT, you own the underlying Bored Ape, the Art, completely.’“
However, the Galaxy Digital report points out that Yuga Labs “implicitly acknowledges that the NFT holder does not own the art.“
This contradiction creates a big discrepancy and can be deemed to be potentially misleading to buyers, Digital Galaxy argues.
As for Moonbirds, Galaxy Digital criticized the way that the project has just changed their collection to embrace a CC0 licence despite telling buyers that they own the IP rights of their Moonbirds NFTs earlier this year.
The sudden change of licensing without warning can be argued to be incredibly misleading as holders’ NFTs become subjected to sudden licensing change which may not have been what they signed up for when they originally bought the NFTs.
Related: Moonbirds Move To CC0 Licensing & Announce Moonbirds DAO!
“The fact that Proof can unilaterally change the terms of its license, and did so, is further proof that Moonbirds NFT holders did not, in fact, ‘own the IP,’” Galaxy Digital argues.
Previous Concerns On IP Rights
This isn’t the first time issues regarding IP rights and licensing has been brought to attention in relation to both BAYC and Moonbirds.
When Moonbirds first announced their change to CC0 licensing, the team received a lot of backlash and criticism for the sudden change, with many holders complaining that the CC0 license was not what they signed up for when they first bought the NFT.
Many also criticized that if the team had wanted the collection to be CC0, they should have done so from the beginning when they first launched the collection.
FYI, shortly after the @moonbirds CC0 announcement, I actually lost a 6 figure licensing deal that I’d been working on for a while.
I understand the decision, but the approach by the team could’ve been much better.
Upwards & Onwards
See you all at Parliament later today!
— Lakoz.eth (🦍 ,🦉) (@Lakoz_) August 5, 2022
Aside from that, BAYC IP rights issue has also gained some attention recently after some users noticed that the IP rights written for BAYC NFTs were different to that of CryptoPunks and Meebits’ IP rights, which Yuga Labs acquired and changed their IP licensing rules recently.
it’s strange that @yugalabs updated the #cryptopunks and #meebits licenses to clearly & correctly state that yuga owns all IP (not token holders), but they are still falsely telling #BAYC holders “you own the underlying Bored Ape, the Art, completely.” 🤔🤔🤔 pic.twitter.com/TVz2R3qcEy
— Alex Thorn (@intangiblecoins) August 19, 2022
Some in the community have criticized Yuga Labs for this, arguing that by keeping the same ‘sentence and wording’ for BAYC’s IP rights, they are essentially ‘misleading’ and/or lying to holders on their rights to their NFTs.
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