最新报道：According to the news from the Coin World Network, in a sudden incident, non-fungible token giant Yuga Labs lost a $9 million judgment in a lawsuit after a U.S. appeals court ordered a trial in its lawsuit with the creator of a controversial NFT series accused of plagiarizing Bored Ape Yacht Club. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said in a ruling issued on Wednesday that Yuga Labs has not yet proved that the competitor's NFT project may cause consumer confusion. The ruling overturned the previous federal court order and sent the case back to the lower court for trial. Yuga Labs filed the initial lawsuit in 2022, accusing Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen of launching an NFT series called "Ryder Ripps Bored Ape Yacht Club", which allegedly imitated its Bored Ape Yacht Club brand. Yuga claimed that the project not only plagiarized its name and image, but also intended to mislead buyers and profit from its reputation. The creators of the rival project argued that their actions were a form of protest art. One of them argued that the series was a comment on what he described as racist imagery in Yuga's original artwork. They deny any commercial intent to confuse or deceive buyers. Another participant, Thomas Lehman, was sued for his technical involvement in developing the RR/BAYC project when he reached a separate settlement with Yuga Labs out of court. In 2023, a federal court in California sided with Yuga Labs and awarded the company $1.6 million in damages. That figure later rose to $9 million after the defendants lost their counterclaims. However, the Ninth Circuit's ruling on Wednesday vacated that ruling, saying the case warranted a full trial. The appellate panel concluded that the core issue — whether the disputed NFT series infringed Yuga's trademark rights — must be resolved at trial. The court said Yuga's claims of trademark infringement and domain name squatting cannot be resolved as a matter of law, citing unresolved questions about the likelihood of consumer confusion. The ruling found that Yuga Labs had not adequately demonstrated that an average consumer would mistake the parody project for its own, despite the competitor’s NFTs using similar names and imagery. The Ninth Circuit also said that determining intent and consumer perception requires factual findings that only a jury can make. While overturning the money verdict, the court did uphold a key legal position of Yuga: that NFTs can qualify as “goods” under U.S. trademark law. This is a very important ruling because it essentially establishes a legal precedent that could strengthen future claims by NFT creators against parody projects. However, while the court ruled that the case must go to trial, it rejected the defense’s argument that parody NFTs are expressive works protected by the First Amendment. The panel also rejected a claim of descriptive fair use, saying that the competitor project’s use of Yuga’s trademarks did not meet the legal threshold for such protection. The case will now return to a California district court, where a jury will consider whether the competitor’s NFT series infringes on Yuga Labs’ trademarks. The trial is expected to address issues such as brand confusion, artistic intent, and the commercial nature of the projects. Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano posted on X that the company would "end the fight" in the lower court. "The Ninth Circuit affirms: BAYC NFTs are protected trademarks, an important victory for every NFT holder. We will now end the fight in the district court, where the judge has already awarded RR BAYC founders over $9,000,000 in damages," Solano wrote.