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Mariah Carey might be the “Queen of Christmas,” but a new legal ruling means she won’t be able to stop others from using the same name.
In a decision issued Tuesday, a tribunal at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected Carey’s application to register the royal title as a federal trademark. The decision went in favor of Elizabeth Chan, another singer who says she’s used the same name for years.
Chan filed a legal case against Carey in August, arguing that “Christmas is big enough for more than one Queen.” After that, Carey never responded to the case or defended her applications for the trademarks, prompting the Trademark Office to rule in favor of Chan by default.
“We are pleased with the victory, and delighted that we were able to help Elizabeth fight back against Carey’s overreaching trademark registrations,” said Tompros, an attorney at the law firm WilmerHale.
In the same statement, Chan herself added: “Christmas is a season of giving, not the season of taking, and it is wrong for an individual to attempt to own and monopolize a nickname like Queen of Christmas for the purposes of abject materialism.”
Carey’s attorney did not return a request for comment on the decision.
In a statement, Chan’s lawyer Louis Tompros called Carey’s efforts to secure legal protection over the “Queen” name “a classic case of trademark bullying” – a term used to criticize overly-aggressive trademark protection by big brands.
Likely playing on her perennial smash hit “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” Carey’s company (Lotion LLC) applied last year to register the “Queen” name as an exclusive brand name for a variety of different goods and services, ranging from music to alcohol to fragrances.
Trademarks are different than copyrights, and they do not give someone blanket ownership over particular words. If Carey had won the registrations and wanted to sue someone, she still would have needed to prove that consumers had confused the two brand names – not always an easy task, particularly with a fairly unoriginal name like “Queen of Christmas.”
But such registrations are still important, and would have empowered Carey’s company to start threatening litigation and crowding out others from using it in similar commercial contexts. That potentially would include Chan, who calls her self “pop music’s only full-time Christmas singer” and says she’s also been repeatedly dubbed the “Queen of Christmas.”
The risk of such litigation prompted Chan to file her August case at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, a court-like body within the USPTO that decides disputes over who is entitled to register particular trademarks. Repped by Tompros, she argued that no single singer or company should be able to lock up the title.
“Ms. Carey can call herself whatever she wants, but she shouldn’t have the ability to block others from doing the same,” Tompros said at the time.
It’s unclear exactly what motivated Carey and her lawyers (from the elite trademark law firm Fross Zelnick) to file the applications, particularly after she gave an interview in December in which she seemed to disclaim the title: “To me, Mary is the Queen of Christmas.”
The dispute over the “Queen” title prompted some fun wrangling among other Christmas “queens.” Darlene Love jokingly urged Carey to “call my lawyer,” noting that David Letterman had “officially declared me the Queen of Christmas 29 years ago.” And just last week, Dolly Parton quickly conceded the title to Carey after an interviewer suggested that Parton might be “the new Queen of Christmas.”
“Now, don’t you say that! I’m not going to compete with Mariah,” Parton said in the interview with Better Homes and Gardens. “I love her. You think of Christmas, you think of Mariah.”
“Is it true that Mariah Carey trademarked ‘Queen of Christmas?’ What does that mean that I can’t use that title?” Love asked in the post. “At 81 years of age I’m NOT changing anything. I’ve been in the business for 52 years, have earned it and can still hit those notes! If Mariah has a problem call David or my lawyer!!”
Megan Thee Stallion and Big Sean have reached a settlement with two little-known Detroit rappers, ending a lawsuit claiming the hip-hop superstars ripped off an earlier song with their 2020 collaboration “Go Crazy.”
In a lawsuit filed in July, Duawn “Go Hard Major” Payne and Harrell “H Matic” James claimed that Megan’s song sounded so much like their 2012 track “Krazy” that there was no way it had been created independently without illegal copying.
But just four months later, attorneys for the pair of accusers notified a federal judge Friday (Nov. 11) that the two sides had “reached an agreement in principle to settle their dispute in its entirety.”
The public filing did not disclose any terms of the agreement, like whether any money would exchange hands or songwriting credits would be altered. Attorneys for both sides did not immediately return requests for more details.
“Go Crazy,” released on Stallion’s 2020 debut album Good News, didn’t chart as a single, but the album spent 75 weeks on the Billboard 200 and peaked at No. 2 in December 2020. The song featured both Big Sean and 2 Chainz, though the latter was not named in the current lawsuit.
In their July 25 complaint, Payne and James claimed that various aspects of “Krazy” and “Go Crazy” are “nearly identical,” including the wording of the chorus, melodic and harmonic sequences and the use of cadence.
“An average lay observer would recognize the infringing work as having been appropriated from [‘Krazy’] because of the striking similarity between the two compositions and the way in which they are performed,” said the complaint.
Since “Krazy” was never released by a label, the attorneys for the two accusers made a creative, hyper-local argument for why Stallion or Big Sean had enough “access” to the song that they were able to copy it — a key requirement in any copyright infringement lawsuit. They said Payne and James had performed the song in “West Detroit hip hop clubs and bars” where Big Sean — a Motor City native — had frequently gone. The pair also sold “thousands of physical copies of CDs” in the parking lots of those same clubs, their lawyers argued.
3LAU is facing a new lawsuit that claims the DJ refused to properly share the earnings from an $11 million NFT auction with a musical collaborator who co-authored one of the songs involved.
In a complaint filed Wednesday (Nov. 9) in New York federal court, Luna Aura (real name Angela Anne Flores) says she has a 50% royalty stake in the song “Walk Away” from his album Ultraviolet — but that 3LAU (real name Justin Blau) offered her just $25,000 from the much-publicized NFT auction tied to the record.
“Despite this financial windfall, defendants only offered Luna Aura a flat one-time payment of twenty-five thousand dollars as compensation in connection with the sale of Ultraviolet and ‘Walk Away’ NFTs,” her lawyers wrote.
Even during last year’s fever-dream craze for NFTs (non-fungible tokens), 3LAU’s Feb. 2021 auction stood out as notable. By selling 33 collectible tokens linked to his 3-year-old album Ultraviolet — the NFTs gave the buyers access to vinyl copies, unreleased music and other special experiences — the DJ-producer raked in $11.7 million. “It was one of those moments in my life where I was like, ‘Holy s—,’” 3LAU told Billboard at the time. “‘I think we just changed everything.’”
But according to Aura’s new lawsuit, he didn’t share those profits with a key person who helped create the album. She says the auction was done without any notice to her, and that the sale breached her 2017 agreement with Blau, which guaranteed her a 50 percent publishing royalty on “Walk Away.”
“Luna Aura has not received any compensation from revenues generated from the NFT project, nor has Luna Aura [received] appropriate credit in connection with the ‘Walk Away’ and Ultraviolet NFTs,” her lawyers wrote. “Despite the commercial and financial success of the NFT auction, defendants only offered Luna Aura an after-the-fact, one-time payment.”
The lawsuit did not specify how much Aura believes is an appropriate cut from the Ultraviolet NFTs but demanded an accounting to determine how much is owed.
A representative for 3LAU did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday.
Philly rapper Tierra Whack was arrested at the Philadelphia International Airport on Tuesday (Nov. 8) for possession of a loaded handgun. A spokesperson for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office confirmed to Billboard that Whack, 27, was taken into custody at the airport after officials found a loaded firearm at a security checkpoint.
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DA office spokesperson Jane Roh noted that Whack had a permit to carry a concealed firearm, and that she was charged with a summary offense for having a loaded firearms at an airport security checkpoint. TMZ reported that law enforcement sources said Whack’s bag was searched by Homeland Security at an X-ray checkpoint, where they discovered the weapon with six live rounds in the magazine and none in the chamber.
Authorities told TMZ they believed that the gun was mistakenly carried by Whack to the airport; the handgun was confiscated and Whack was issued a citation and released. A spokesperson for Whack could not be reached at press time.
Philly magazine noted that licensed handgun owners are legally allowed to bring a gun on a plane if they check it in a proper container at the ticket counter. If you try to bring it through the TSA checkpoint on your body or in a carry-on, however, that is a no go, even though it happens all the time. The magazine reported that according to the TSA, agents discover 17 guns a day at airports around the U.S., with strapped travelers setting a new record in 2021, when a total of 5,972 guns were intercepted by the TSA.
As for how often people try to fly with a loaded gun, the TSA said that during a single week agents discovered 64 guns in carry-on bags, 55 of which were loaded; agents confiscated 39 guns at Philadelphia International in 2021 and so far this year they’ve already taken away 38 guns, 28 of which were loaded.
A Florida appeals court ruled Wednesday that YNW Melly could face the death penalty if convicted in his upcoming murder trial, overturning a judge’s decision that prosecutors forfeited the right to seek capital punishment.
With a trial looming this past summer, Judge Andrew Siegel ruled that prosecutors couldn’t seek the death penalty because they had failed to give Melly and his attorneys proper notice that they planned to do so, violating strict state rules.
But in a ruling on Wednesday, Florida’s District Court of Appeal ruled the judge’s decision was incorrect. Since prosecutors gave notice that they might seek death when they first charged Melly in 2019, they had complied with state rules. “Notice is notice,” the court wrote in its opinion.
The ruling means that Melly could be sentenced to death if convicted in his upcoming trial. But that likely won’t take place until the Florida Supreme Court rules on the case, because Wednesday’s ruling certified the issue as one of “great public importance” that should be decided by the state high court.
In a statement to Billboard, Melly’s attorney Philip R. Horowitz said he and his client were “disappointed in the ruling” but “look forward to our opportunity to argue our position before the justices.”
The ruling came as Melly (real name Jamell Demons) continues to await trial on first-degree murder charges over accusations that he and another rapper shot and killed Anthony “YNW Sakchaser” Williams and Christopher “YNW Juvy” Thomas Jr. in 2018.
A trial had previously been scheduled for April, but was called off at the last minute, prompting Melly’s attorneys to file a so-called “speedy trial demand” that would require the case to start within 60 days. Another trial was then set for July, but the case was again delayed over the current dispute about the death penalty.
A first-degree murder defendant in Florida would typically face the possibility of execution if convicted, but Melly’s attorneys argued in April that the state had failed to comply with strict laws on how they must warn defendants that they’ll seek the death penalty.
Florida requires prosecutors to give notice 45 days after arraignment if they plan to seek capital punishment. In Melly’s case, the state attorney filed such notice when they originally indicted the rapper in 2019 but failed to do so when a so-called superseding indictment was handed down earlier this year.
In July, Judge Siegel sided with Melly’s attorneys and said prosecutors had forfeited the chance to seek death. But after prosecutors argued that the ruling was clearly incorrect, Judge Siegel acknowledged that his ruling addressed a novel legal question and halted the case until a state appeals court could rule on it.
On Wednesday, the District Court of Appeal did so – and sided decisively with prosecutors.
“We find that the state complied with its statutory obligations when it filed its notice of intent to seek the death penalty within 45 days of arraignment,” Judge Spencer D. Levine wrote for the appeals court. “The fact that the state filed a superseding indictment, requiring a second arraignment, does not vitiate the already filed and timely notice of intent. Notice is notice.”
The ruling said that rules were designed to give defendants a fair chance to prepare for a death penalty argument, and that prosecutors had lived up to that requirement with their original notice.
“Clearly, in the present case, the defendant was noticed and apprised of the state seeking the death penalty in 2019,” Judge Levine wrote. “The defendant has had nearly three years to start the preparation of his defense to the state seeking the death penalty [and] the record contains no evidence that the defendant was prejudiced in any way.”
Melly’s attorneys can appeal the ruling to the Florida Supreme Court.
Just two days after Condé Nast sued Drake and 21 Savage for using a fake cover story in Vogue magazine to promote their new album Her Loss, a federal judge has issued a restraining order forcing them to stop using it.
Siding with Condé, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff ruled Wednesday that the faux cover – one of several fake promos for the album – was likely violating the publisher’s trademarks because Drake and 21 were “misleading consumers” and “deceiving the public.”
“Issuance of the requested temporary restraining order is in the public interest to protect the public against confusion, deception and mistake,” the New York federal judge wrote.
For the past week, Drake and 21 Savage have been on a phony media blitz to promote Her Loss, which debuted Friday. They dropped a video of a fake performance on Saturday Night Live, teased an a similar appearance on NPR’s Tiny Desk series, and created an elaborate deepfake interview with Howard Stern.
NPR used the stunt as an opportunity to tell the star he was “welcome anytime” on the beloved concert, and Stern laughed the whole thing off, but Condé Nast went a different route. In a lawsuit filed Monday, the publisher called the stunt a “flagrant infringement” its trademark, aimed at exploiting the “tremendous value that a cover feature in Vogue magazine carries” without actually securing one.
“All of this is false,” the publisher’s lawyers wrote, demanding an immediate injunction forcing Drake and 21 to cease all use of the “counterfeit” cover. “And none of it has been authorized by Condé Nast.”
The order issued Wednesday is what’s known as a temporary restraining order – a quick injunction designed to prevent “irreparable harm” that could not later be undone. A plaintiff like Condé can only win one if the judge decides that they are likely to eventually win their lawsuit.
Judge Rakoff’s order bars Drake and 21 from “using, displaying, dissenting or distributing” the fake cover or the actual phony Vogue copies they printed as part of the stunt. And it expressly requires them to take down websites and social media posts sharing the image, and to remove physical posters put up in certain markets.
Notably, it also explicitly requires them to stop making any mention of Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour. In its lawsuit, Conde took particular aim at the fact that Drake had thanked her in his posts sharing the fake magazine cover, saying it had been “deliberately deceptive” to suggest that the infamous editor had endorsed the project.
Reps for Drake and 21 did not immediately return requests for comment on Wednesday’s order.
A temporary restraining order is, by its nature, temporary – lasting only until the parties have a chance to argue over a longer-term injunction. A hearing on such an injunction is set for Nov. 22.
Read the full order here:
Bankroll Freddie was arrested in Jonesboro, Arkansas on Wednesday (Nov. 9) as part of a major federal drug and gun bust conducted across the state. The rapper (born Freddie Gladney III) and his father, Freddie Gladney Jr., were among more than 45 people swept up in the action according to a copy of the federal indictment.
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The indictment claims that from March 2021 through Oct. 2022 the defendants allegedly conspired to distribute and possess cocaine, crack cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana and that Freddie possessed an arsenal of firearms that included at least three 9mm pistols, two rifles and machine guns “in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime.”
Prosecutors claim that the Gladneys and their co-conspirators allegedly trafficked guns and drugs between Arkansas, Texas, California, Arizona, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee and Oklahoma and that the arrests were the culmination of three different investigations. According to the Associated Press, a statement from the U.S. Attorneys office in Little Rock said that two FBI investigations into gang violence and drug trafficking and a separate DEA investigation uncovered methamphetamine and fentanyl being mailed from California into Arkansas and then distributed in Little Rock, Pine Bluff and Houston; weapons, including machine guns, cash and drugs were all seized as part of the investigation.
At press time a spokesperson for Gladney, 28, had not returned a request for comment.
KAIT 8 reported that the FBI investigations focused on two rival Arkansas gangs: the “Every Body Killas Gang (EBK) and the “Loady Murder Mobb Gang.” After Pine Bluff detective Kevin Collins was shot and killed in Oct. 2020 while serving a warrant on an EBK member while assisting federal agents in their investigation into the gangs the information gleaned from his work allowed federal agents to obtain 12 wiretaps through June 2022 that helped prevent planned crimes and led to the arrest of Bankroll, his father and others.
According to court documents, Quality Control rapper Freddie is facing at least 11 charges, which include: possession of cocaine, possession of crack cocaine, possession of marijuana, two counts of intent to distribute marijuana, knowingly and intentionally possession firearms, three counts of providing false/fictitious information on a gun purchase form, using guns for gun trafficking, using a telephone to traffic drugs and knowingly possessing one or more machine guns.
Freddie was arrested in Arkansas in April on multiple charges, including resisting arrest/refusal to submit to arrest/active or passive refusal, “simultaneous possession of drugs and firearms,” as well as a felony count of possession of a schedule VI controlled substance with the purpose to deliver, speeding and an additional possession charge.
Arkansas native Freddie joined the Quality Control team in 2019 after releasing his single “Drip Like This” and the Saved By the Bales mixtape, followed by 2020’s From Trap to Rap album, had features from Lil Baby, Lil Yachty, Moneybagg Yo and Young Dolph. After singing to Motown Records in 2020, he dropped the 2021 single “Add It Up, followed by the Megan Thee Stallion collab “Pop It” from his 2021 album Big Bank. He released a collab with Icewear Vezzo, “Picking Sides,” around the time of the April arrest, followed by his From Trap to Rap 2 album.
A Los Angeles judge on Wednesday (Nov. 9) tossed out a lawsuit accusing Phoebe Bridgers of defaming producer Chris Nelson with a social media post echoing accusations of abuse made against him by another woman.
The judge cited California’s so-called anti-SLAPP law, which empowers courts to quickly dismiss lawsuits that might silence free speech. The star’s lawyers had argued that Nelson was just using the lawsuit to “chill Ms. Bridgers’ allegations of abusive conduct, which are protected by the First Amendment.”
The decision, issued by Judge Curtis A. Kin of the Los Angeles Superior Court, did not come with a written ruling explaining the judge’s rationale. An attorney for Nelson did not immediately return a request for comment.
In a statement to Billboard, a rep for Bridgers said: “We feel vindicated that the court recognized this lawsuit as frivolous and without merit. It was not grounded in law, or facts, but was filed with the sole intention of causing harm to our client’s reputation and career. This victory is important not just for our client but for all those she was seeking to protect by using her platform.”
Nelson sued Bridgers last year, claiming she had defamed him by posting false information to social media as part of a “vendetta to destroy plaintiff’s reputation.”
He pointed to a series of October 2020 Instagram posts, in which the singer said she had “witnessed and can personally verify much of the abuse (grooming, stealing, violence) perpetuated by Chris Nelson.” She also directed her followers to a separate thread from friend Emily Bannon, which contained more extensive allegations against Nelson.
Bridgers quickly moved to end the case, with her lawyers arguing that Nelson was trying to silence her allegations by dragging her through messy litigation: “It is clear that Mr. Nelson voluntarily and intentionally published his ‘amended’ complaint to the media before it was even filed in a transparent attempt to embarrass Ms. Bridgers and to get attention for his dispute with her.”
Faced with that motion, Nelson demanded the right to depose her — saying it was the only way he could prove that his allegation was valid. He said denying him that chance would violate his right to due process. A judge eventually agreed with him, ordering Bridgers to sit for questioning.
Kanye West is facing a copyright lawsuit over allegations that his “Life of the Party” illegally sampled a song by the pioneering rap group Boogie Down Productions – the latest in a string of such infringement case against the embattled rapper.
In a complaint filed Monday in New York federal court, Phase One Network (the group that owns Boogie Down’s copyrights) says Ye incorporated key aspects from the 1986 song “South Bronx” into “Life of the Party,” which was released in 2021 on West’s Stem Player streaming platform.
How do they know he did so? Phase One says West’s people reached out to clear the use of the Boogie Down song – and then released it anyway when a deal was never struck.
“The communications confirmed that ‘South Bronx’ had been incorporated into the infringing track even though West had yet to obtain such license,” Phase One’s lawyers wrote. “Despite the fact that final clearance for use of ‘South Bronx’ in the infringing track was never authorized, the infringing track wa nevertheless reproduced, sold, distributed, publicly performed and exploited.”
Amid his many, many other problems over the last year, West has been repeatedly sued for illegally sampling or interpolating in his tracks. In May, a Texas pastor named David P. Moten accused the rapper of sampling from his recorded sermon in “Come to Life.” In June he was sued again, that time for using a snippet of Marshall Jefferson’s 1986 house track “Move Your Body” in the song “Flowers.”
Though they’re coming at a faster clip in recent months, such lawsuits are nothing new for West. In 2019, he and Pusha T were sued for sampling George Jackson‘s “I Can’t Do Without You” on the track “Come Back Baby.” That same year, he was sued for allegedly using an audio snippet of a young girl praying in his 2016 song “Ultralight Beam.”
Further back, West was hit with similar cases over allegedly unlicensed samples used in “New Slaves,” “Bound 2,” “My Joy.” And thought he isn’t named in the case, Universal Music Group is currently facing a lawsuit that claims West used an initially-unlicensed sample of King Crimson’s 1969 “21st Century Schizoid Man” in his 2010 track “Power.”
In the new lawsuit, Phase One’s lawyers say West used an “exact reproduction” of “South Bronx,” featuring the song’s horn hits, a melodic figure and a drum fill. The company says it controls both the publishing and recording copyrights to the song, and accuses West of infringing both.
A spokesperson for West could not be located to comment on the new lawsuit. Multiple former press representatives for West have recently told Billboard that they no longer work with him.
Read the entire lawsuit here:
