{"id":6840,"date":"2025-07-11T05:54:01","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T05:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/rapper-cant-use-situationships-says-judge\/"},"modified":"2025-07-11T05:54:01","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T05:54:01","slug":"rapper-cant-use-situationships-says-judge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/rapper-cant-use-situationships-says-judge\/","title":{"rendered":"Rapper Can’t Use Situationships, Says Judge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tT.I. has been hit with a legal injunction that prohibits him from releasing his upcoming comedy movie under the title \u201cSituationships\u201d while litigating claims that he stole the moniker from a web series.<\/p>\n

\n\tJudge Louis L. Stanton says in a preliminary injunction entered Wednesday (July 9) that web series creator Cylla Senii has \u201cshown a likelihood of success on the merits\u201d of her trademark infringement suit against the rapper (Clifford Harris Jr.) and his company Grand Hustle Films.<\/p>\n

\n\tSenii sued T.I. last month, alleging that the upcoming movie Situationships<\/em> \u2014 written, directed by and starring the rapper \u2014 lifts its title from her 2016 web series of the same name.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe web series Situationships<\/em> originated on YouTube and was later distributed by BET Digital, Amazon Prime and Tubi. Senii claims she\u2019s been working for years to adapt the series into a movie of her own, and that she was \u201cshocked\u201d to learn T.I. was planning to use the title for his film.<\/p>\n

\n\tT.I.\u2019s lawyers say his movie, which filmed in Atlanta last year, is still in post-production and does not yet have a final title. The rapper\u2019s team argues that even if they do ultimately go with the name \u201cSituationships,\u201d there\u2019s no evidence the movie would compete or be confused with \u201ca series that was released to consumers years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Judge Stanton\u2019s Wednesday order sides with Senii, saying she \u201cwill suffer irreparable harm through the loss of control of its validly obtained mark and damage to the Situationships brand\u201d if T.I. is allowed to use the title.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt is therefore ordered that Grand Hustle Films, all of its agents and employees, and all other persons acting in concert with defendants, are restrained and enjoined from producing, releasing, teasing, advertising, marketing, announcing or promoting a film titled \u2018Situationships,\u2019\u201d writes the federal judge in New York.<\/p>\n

\n\tReps for Senii and T.I. did not immediately return requests for comment on Thursday (July 10).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe preliminary injunction is T.I.\u2019s second legal setback this week. On Tuesday (July 8), a federal judge in California slashed the rapper and his wife Tameka \u201cTiny\u201d Harris\u2019 $71 million jury verdict against toymaker MGA down to $18 million.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe judge in that case found that while T.I. and Tiny proved at trial that MGA\u2019s O.M.G.\u201d dolls copied their real-life teen pop group OMG Girlz, there was not sufficient evidence to merit a $53 million punitive damages add-on. The long-running dispute is now on track to be retried for a whopping fourth time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

T.I. has been hit with a legal injunction that prohibits him from releasing his upcoming comedy movie under the title \u201cSituationships\u201d while litigating claims that he stole the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6841,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[423,2278,6345],"class_list":["post-6840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-judge","tag-rapper","tag-situationships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6840","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=6840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}