{"id":5306,"date":"2025-04-15T22:01:02","date_gmt":"2025-04-15T22:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/dmx-estate-wins-ip-fight-plus-nelly-soulja-boy-more-music-law-news\/"},"modified":"2025-04-15T22:01:02","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T22:01:02","slug":"dmx-estate-wins-ip-fight-plus-nelly-soulja-boy-more-music-law-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/dmx-estate-wins-ip-fight-plus-nelly-soulja-boy-more-music-law-news\/","title":{"rendered":"DMX Estate Wins IP Fight, Plus Nelly, Soulja Boy & More Music Law News"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tThis is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from <\/em>Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\tThis week: DMX\u2019s estate wins a legal battle with his ex-wife over his music catalog; Nelly\u2019s former St. Lunatics bandmate drops a lawsuit over his debut solo album; Soulja Boy is hit with a $4 million civil verdict for assault and sexual battery; and much more.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\t\tTHE BIG STORY: DMX Estate Battle<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tBack in 2016, the late great DMX<\/a> (Earl Simmons) signed a divorce settlement with his then-wife Tashera Simmons, ending a long marriage that had extended through his turn-of-the-century heyday, as he released Billboard Hot 100 hits like \u201cParty Up (Up In Here).\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAmong other provisions, the deal mentioned \u201cintellectual property,\u201d a key marital asset for a chart-topping musician. Tashera says that clause gave her co-ownership of his copyrights and trademarks, but DMX insisted that it only granted her the right to receive royalty payments \u2014 an argument his estate has maintained in the years since his 2021 death.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s a crucial distinction. Royalties are all well and good, but ownership would give Tashera approval power<\/em> over the use of DMX\u2019s catalog and name. That would mean an effective veto over potentially lucrative projects, like a biopic about the legendary rapper.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a ruling last week, a New York judge ruled against Tashera on that question, declaring that DMX\u2019s estate (run by an ex-fianc\u00e9e and a daughter by another woman) was the \u201csole owner of all intellectual property rights.\u201d Why that ruling? To find out, go read our full story here, with access to the full decision issued by the judge.<\/p>\n

\n\t\tOther top stories this week\u2026<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tNELLY CASE CLOSED \u2013 OR IS IT?<\/strong> \u2013 Nelly\u2019s former St. Lunatics bandmate Ali moved to voluntarily dismiss a lawsuit that had accused the rapper of failing to pay him for his alleged work on Nelly\u2019s 2000 debut album Country Grammar<\/em>. But Nelly\u2019s lawyers quickly opposed the move, arguing that Ali and his lawyers must face sanctions for filing a \u201cridiculous\u201d case that \u201cshould never have been brought.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSOULJA BOY VERDICT<\/strong> \u2013 Following a month-long trial, a Los Angeles jury held Soulja Boy liable for assault, sexual battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress in a civil lawsuit filed by a former personal assistant who claimed that he raped her. Jurors awarded the Jane Doe accuser more than $4 million in damages, and she could win even more in so-called punitive damages in future proceedings.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPATENTLY FALSE\u201d<\/strong> \u2013 Record executive Kevin Liles<\/strong> asked a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit accusing the 300 Entertainment founder of sexual assault in the early 2000s, arguing there\u2019s zero evidence for the \u201csalacious\u201d allegations because they are \u201centirely false.\u201d His lawyers argued the allegations \u2014 that Liles harassed and sexually assaulted an unnamed female employee while serving as the president of Def Jam Records in 2002 \u2014 are both \u201cpatently false\u201d and were filed far past the statute of limitations.<\/p>\n

\n\tLIMITATIONS OF STATUE<\/strong> \u2013 Former Migos rapper Quavo (Quavious Marshall) was hit with a copyright lawsuit centered on a recent music video he released on TikTok \u2014 not over an uncleared sample or a stolen melody, mind you, but a quartz sculpture of a 1961 Ferrari that he used as a prop. The case, filed by sculptor Daniel Arsham, claimed that Quavo \u201cunlawfully exploited\u201d the piece by rapping in front of it during the December social media video: \u201cMr. Arsham never consented to the artwork being used in the infringing content.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKAROL G RULING<\/strong> \u2013 A court in Colombia ruled that Karol G\u2019s \u201c+57\u201d violated that country\u2019s laws because its lyrics \u201csexualized\u201d minors, capping off months of controversy over the track. \u201cSexualizing minors reduces them to becoming objects of desire, and exposes them to risks that can affect their development,\u201d the court wrote in the ruling. The song, also featuring J Balvin, Maluma, Feid, Blessd, Ryan Castro and DFZM, has faced a barrage of criticism after it originally included a line about a woman being a \u201cmamacita\u201d since she was 14 years old.<\/p>\n

\n\tAI LEGISLATION<\/strong> \u2013 A federal law that would ban unauthorized AI deepfake impersonations, known as the NO FAKES Act, was reintroduced in Congress\u00a0\u2014 only this time with public support from AI powerhouses including OpenAI and YouTube. First introduced last year, the bill would create a federal right of publicity for the first time, allowing individuals to police how their name, image and likeness are used by others, an issue that has become far more pressing as AI video generators make it far easier to create uncanny deepfakes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2553,5537,70,835,153,593,3487,310,2552,882],"class_list":["post-5306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-boy","tag-dmx","tag-estate","tag-fight","tag-law","tag-music","tag-nelly","tag-news","tag-soulja","tag-wins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}