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Rolls-Royce Wins Suit Against Rapper

A New Jersey federal judge has ruled that Robert Davis, the Atlanta rapper formerly known as Rolls Royce Rizzy, can’t use the automaker’s name as part of his stage name anymore because it’s trademark dilution by tarnishment.

April 05, 2016

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A New Jersey federal judge has ruled that Robert Davis, the Atlanta rapper formerly known as Rolls Royce Rizzy, can’t use the automaker’s name as part of his stage name anymore because it’s trademark dilution by tarnishment. Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Limited and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars NA, LLC (collectively known as Rolls-Royce) filed a trademark suit against Davis last January, after their cease-and-desist letters to him went unanswered; Davis even continued to use the company’s trademark for his own brand, according to the lawsuit, including selling music and promoting it on websites and his own social media pages. He was also selling merchandise with the words “Team Rolls Royce” on it through an online store, and was photographed wearing t-shirts and hats emblazoned with the trademark. Rolls-Royce opted to sue at that point, seeking a permanent injunction against Davis.

Staying consistent, Davis never formally responded to the complaint (even though he discussed the suit on Twitter), and U.S. District Judge Kevin McNulty handed down a default judgment this month in favor of Rolls-Royce. He relied heavily on Davis’s social media accounts for the dilution by tarnishment finding, something we’ve been seeing happen in many lawsuits as more and more people turn to the internet to express themselves.

Dilution occurs when “the use of a mark or trade name in commerce sufficiently similar to a famous mark that by association it reduces, or is likely to reduce, the public’s perception that the famous mark signified something unique, singular or particular.” Tarnishment occurs when “the reputation of a famous mark is harmed through association with another similar mark or trade name.” The court pointed out that Davis’s promotional material on social media comprised of “language and imagery that could create negative associations with plaintiffs’ products.” The rapper had used the trademark for sexually-charged promotions and profanity-laced songs.

It was also Davis’s social media use that allowed the court to find that there was no trademark infringement. One of the elements that Rolls-Royce had to prove under trademark infringement was the likelihood of confusion. That is, whether consumers under ordinary conditions would be likely to confuse the products. Courts determine this by going through what’s known as the Polaroid factors from the 1961 case Polaroid Corp. v. Polarad Electronics Corp. McNulty thought that Davis’s discussion of the suit on Twitter, where he remarked that he must’ve been doing something right in the music industry if Rolls-Royce was willing to sue him, showed that he hadn’t set out to create an association between the two of them. “Davis posting about the litigation on social media would seem to undercut that argument,” said the judge. “There is no evidence that the parties target their sales efforts to the same market segment, or that the parties use the same methods of promotion to target these consumers; in fact, the evidence tends to point in the opposite direction.” These are important points because the court is saying even though Davis was using Rolls-Royce’s mark, there can’t automatically be confusion based on that fact alone, when the respective consumers aren’t the same (people seeking luxury cars vs. people seeking rap music), and are highly unlikely to come across the same advertisements while seeking out these two different products.

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Davis has changed his name to Royce Rizzy officially.

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