Ryder Ripps must pay Yuga Labs $9 million after lawsuit's final judgment

Ryder Ripps was hoping to settle the lawsuit he filed alongside Jeremy Cahen, also known as Pauly0x, against NFT company Yuga Labs for a payout of $100 billion.

Instead, following a final judgment in the case by U.S. District Judge John F. Walter, Ripps and Cahen will have to pay Yuga Labs a sum of nearly $9 million in disgorgement of profits, penalties, attorneys' fees, and other costs. 

A federal judge earlier ruled in favor of Yuga Labs in the company's long-running dispute against Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen, creators of the "copycat" RR/BAYC collection, in Oct. 2023. However, the final penalty sum of $8.9 million, including the nearly $7 million in attorneys' fees, was only determined with this recent motion. 

As part of the judgment, Ripps and Cahen must also relinquish the NFTs and transfer any infringing intellectual property, including domain names and smart contracts, over to Yuga Labs within the next two weeks. 

Yuga Labs, and lawyers for Ripps and Cahen were unable to be immediately reached for comment. 

Correction: An earlier version mischaracterized the lawsuit as a copyright dispute.