Yuga labs, the startup behind the mega-popular Bored Ape Yacht nonfungible token collection, has acquired the intellectual property of CryptoPunks — a pioneer in the NFT space — and Meebits from Larva Labs.
Financial terms weren’t disclosed. Through the pact, Yuga now owns the brands, copyright in the art, and other IP rights for both collections, along with 423 CryptoPunks and 1,711 Meebits NFTs. The acquisition shows the craze for NFTs, which use blockchain technology to verify ownership of digital goods, is still in full swing.
The expectation is that Yuga — known as one of the savviest marketers of NFT brands — could help build CryptoPunks and Meebits into even bigger brands, perhaps with some of the characters debuting in games or on luxury goods. Yuga recently struck a deal with Animoca Brands to develop a game using BAYC characters. Owners of BAYC get access to exclusive merchandise and exclusive events.
“What we don’t plan to do is shoehorn these NFT collections into the ‘club’ model we’ve developed for BAYC,” Yuga’s team said in a blog post. “We’re not in a rush here. We’ll be listening to the community before we decide what comes next.”
As part of the acquisition, Yuga said it will transfer commercial and exclusive licensing rights to individual NFT holders for free.
The Larva Labs founders have almost fully divested from the project at this point, with Yuga Labs detailing in a blog post that they had also acquired 423 CryptoPunks and 1,711 Meebits from the company, leaving the founders with just a few of each in addition to their generative art project Autoglyphs which was not part of the deal.
Yuga Labs has taken a more aggressive path toward actively building out the community of the Bored Apes project, revealing a partnership.
“This is, however, not an acquisition of Larva Labs… As for what’s next for us, we never talk about that until it’s ready, but in general we’re excited to get back to what we do best, which is working on weird new stuff,” a blog post from the Larva Labs founders reads.
CryptoPunks owners have been upset over the way Larva Labs have handled IP rights to the NFTs they bought. The commercial exploitation of NFTs is complicated, because the mere act of tokenization doesn’t automatically transfer copyrights or other forms of intellectual property. Hollywood, meanwhile, has taken a keen interest in developing media based on NFTs, which could boost the value of the most popular collections.
Guy Oseary, a talent manager known for representing Madonna and U2, signed Yuga Labs as a client in October, with an eye to helping NFT-owning community members profit from their works.
