Nifty News: Jimmy Fallon wants exemption from BAYC trademark case

Jimmy Fallon wants out of the BAYC trademark case, while Blur is responsible for the NFT market’s three-month high.

Lawyers for Jimmy Fallon, star of NBC’s long-running comedy and variety series The Tonight Show, have filed a petition to “quash”  a subpoena requiring him to testify in the Yuga Labs Inc. v. Ripps et al. case. 

The lawyers claim that Fallon has no connection to the dispute, is not a party to the Ripps litigation, and has never met or interacted with Ryder Ripps, creative director of OKFocus or Jeremy Cahen, one of the founders of the alleged Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) “copycat.”

Yuga Labs is suing Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen for issuing a “copycat” nonfungible token (NFT) collection that resulted in trademark infringement, false advertising and unfair competition. The ongoing case has highlighted intellectual property and trademark rights within the NFT space.

While Fallon acquired a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT and talked about it on his show, he has nothing to do with the Yuga Labs and Ripps case, according to the petition.

Fallon is also a co-defendant with Paris Hilton in a separate securities litigation involving Yuga Labs.

Getty Images and Candy Digital to sell NFTs from Archives

Getty Images is partnering with NFT platform Candy Digital to offer rare photos in NFT form, starting with photographs from its 1970s music and culture collection.

In a tweet, Candy Digital revealed that the collection includes works by Don Paulsen, David Redfern and other photographers depicting iconic figures like Elvis, David Bowie and The Rolling Stones.

The NFTs will be available for purchase on Candy Digital’s website starting on March 21, with prices ranging from $25 to $200. The release will be available to buyers in several countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan.

This partnership comes as the NFT market shows signs of growth, with marketplace volume increasing for the fourth consecutive month in February.

Forkast launches NFT price tracker indices

Forkast Labs, a data intelligence service formed by the merger of Forkast.News and NFT market tracker CryptoSlam, has launched a series of NFT indexes to provide real-time insights into the digital asset economy.

The Forkast 500 NFT index will measure performance across 21 blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana, Polygon and Cardano, and is designed to be a proxy of the entire NFT market.

The indexes aim to provide a more comprehensive measure of the health of the NFT economy, which is difficult to discern using traditional market rankings based on prices, sales and transaction volumes.

NFT market hits 3-month high as Blur responsible for high trades

The NFT market is experiencing a bullish trend, according to data derived from NFT tracker CryptoSlam, reaching a 3-month high for the second consecutive day with over 125,000 trades in the past 24 hours. Trading surpassed $2.04 billion last month, up 117% from $941 million in January.

Related: The metaverse is getting a greenhouse and garden full of NFT flowers

This growth is due to Blur, an evolving market that surpassed OpenSea in trading volume just this month.

Blur’s trading volume jumped over $1.13 billion in February from the month prior, a statistic that accounts for almost all of the entire NFT market’s month-over-month gains.