T.I. appears to be in some hot water as he’s now facing a lawsuit from the very same company he tried to sue over the likeness of his and his wife Tiny’s former girl group OMG Girlz.
After winning the battle waged by Tip earlier this month, toymaker MGA Entertainment is now demanding the rapper pay $6million to reimburse the company for defending itself against the “frivolous” lawsuit.
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“The OMG Girlz’ litigation tactics, over-reaching claims, and misconduct — including violating one of this Court’s … rulings as to require a mistrial — justify awarding MGA the over $6.1million in fees spent litigating this matter,” the company’s lawyers wrote in a new court filing obtained by Billboard on Monday (June 26).
In most lawsuits, each side pays their own legal bills, no matter who wins – but trademark lawsuits are slightly different. With those, federal judges are empowered to force parties who lose their lawsuits to repay the winner if a case is “exceptional.”
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In its filing, MGA argued that its case was exactly that.
“Both in the manner the OMG Girlz litigated this case, and the weakness of the substantive claims and theories the OMG Girlz presented (as confirmed by the jury), the Court should conclude that this case stands out from others,” MGA wrote.
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Following a 10-day trial in May and only a few hours of deliberation, a California federal jury found that MGA Entertainment’s O.M.G. dolls did not infringe the trade dress or misappropriate the name, likeness or identity of the OMG Girlz pop group co-owned by T.I. and his wife Tiny Harris, marking the end of a heated $100million legal battle that involved accusations of racism and extortion.
In January, Tiny, who formed the OMG Girlz in 2009, called out MGA for allegedly stealing the group’s likeness for its L.O.L Surprise OMG Girls dolls.
T.I. and Tiny claimed that MGA announced its plan to launch a line of dolls modeled after the OMG Girlz in 2010, but failed to secure a licensing agreement and allegedly refused to discuss compensation. The dolls hit shelves in 2019.
The couple had attempted to persuade a jury that the line of dolls were examples of both “cultural appropriation and outright theft of the intellectual property,” and that the company attempted to steal the look of a group of “young multicultural women.”
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The suit featured side-by-side images that aimed to demonstrate how each doll was based on a particular member of OMG Girlz. However, this argument was blocked by Judge James V. Selna who ruled in one statement that allegations of “cultural appropriation” were “immaterial and impertinent” to the actual legal issues at play in the case and could not be made in front of jurors.
The initial suit was ultimately declared a mistrial, after the toymaker argued cultural appropriation accusations had ruined the opportunity for a fair trial.
