Yuga Labs Buys The IP Of CryptoPunks and Meebits Collections From Larva Labs

Yuga Labs, the company behind for the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, has acquired CryptoPunks and Meebits from the developer Larva Labs.

According to the official announcement, Yuga Labs has acquired the IP of the CryptoPunks and Meebits NFT collections from Larva Labs. In other words, they now own the brands, copyright in the art, and other IP rights for both collections, along with 423 CryptoPunks and 1711 Meebits.

Larva Labs said it will retain the rights to its other big NFT collection, Autoglyphs, “as well as a group of our favorite Punks and Meebs.”

Bored Ape Yacht Club is the most valuable NFT collection in crypto, followed by CryptoPunks.

Yuga Labs also says it plans to grant the commercial rights to all CryptoPunk and Meebit images to their respective owners. They wrote in the announcement:

“We’re working with our legal teams to draft the new terms and conditions for both collections, and expect to share these with the community soon. By handing over these rights, we’re further aligning CryptoPunks and Meebits with the web3 ethos, and we expect a wide-range of third party developers and community creators to incorporate CryptoPunks and Meebits into their web3 projects.”

Yuga Labs has already done this for Bored Ape owners. They way it works is that Yuga Labs owns the Bored Ape Yacht Club, but each token holder is free to monetize their specific ape. Holders have used that idea to spin off their own NFT collections based on particular apes, or to sign their apes with major record labels.

In February, the company was reported to be in talks with the VC powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz about an investment that would value it at around $5 billion.