{"id":8201,"date":"2025-10-17T03:36:32","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T03:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/temu-slams-mf-doom-estates-lawsuit-over-counterfeit-merch\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T16:27:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T16:27:12","slug":"temu-slams-mf-doom-estates-lawsuit-over-counterfeit-merch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/temu-slams-mf-doom-estates-lawsuit-over-counterfeit-merch\/","title":{"rendered":"Temu Slams MF Doom Estate’s Lawsuit Over Counterfeit Merch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tTemu wants to dismiss a lawsuit over counterfeit MF Doom merchandise brought by the late hip-hop legend\u2019s estate, arguing in a new court filing that it\u2019s not responsible for the actions of independent Chinese sellers who use the e-commerce site.<\/p>\n

\n\tGas Drawls LLC, which manages the estate of MF Doom (Daniel Dumile), filed suit in August, accusing Temu of selling dozens of knock-off t-shirts, hats, posters and other merchandise displaying the deceased rapper\u2019s name and signature mask. Temu\u2019s attorneys have now responded with a court filing that calls the case legally defective.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cGas Drawls\u2019 complaint suffers from a fundamental problem: it fails to plead any plausible facts supporting its conclusory allegation that Temu \u2014 rather than independent third-party sellers \u2014 made, sold and shipped the allegedly infringing products,\u201d write Temu\u2019s lawyers from the firm Knobbe Martens in the Thursday (Oct. 16) filing.<\/p>\n

\n\tTemu\u2019s attorneys say the company\u2019s business model clearly leaves the selling of products to independent third parties in China. They argue that Temu is just the intermediary \u2014 and that under intellectual property law, a platform can\u2019t be held directly liable for infringement by third-party users.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnother problem with the lawsuit, argues Temu, is that the MF Doom estate is trying to claim ownership of the deceased rapper\u2019s likeness. But Temu says post-mortem rights of publicity do not exist in the United Kingdom, where MF Doom died in 2020.<\/p>\n

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\n\tTemu maintains that it \u201ctakes intellectual property rights seriously\u201d and has a robust system for users to report infringement on the site. According to the motion, MF Doom\u2019s estate never availed itself of these procedures before resorting to litigation. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNonetheless, upon receiving the draft, Temu promptly investigated the matter,\u201d write Temu\u2019s lawyers. \u201cActing out of an abundance of caution and in accordance with its IP policies \u2014 not as an admission of merit to Gas Drawls\u2019 claims \u2014 Temu removed every listing that it could identify from the poor-quality screenshots provided.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTemu is asking a judge to dismiss all of the MF Doom estate\u2019s claims outright. And if the lawsuit moves forward, the company wants, at the very least, to remove the estate\u2019s \u201cirrelevant and inflammatory\u201d allegations that accuse it of \u201cunethical\u201d and \u201chorrific\u201d business practices.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe MF Doom estate declined to comment on the motion. But its attorney, Jeff Gluck<\/strong>, pointed out to Billboard <\/em>that some infringing merchandise is still available on Temu<\/a> despite the company\u2019s claims to the contrary.<\/p>\n

\n\tGluck is also representing Twenty One Pilots in another lawsuit against Temu. Brought just days before the musical duo debuted their new album Breach <\/em>atop the Billboard 200 last month, that case similarly alleged that Temu is flooding the market with cheap knockoff merch.<\/p>\n

\"Billboard<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Temu wants to dismiss a lawsuit over counterfeit MF Doom merchandise brought by the late hip-hop legend\u2019s estate, arguing in a new court filing that it\u2019s not responsible […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1730,6895,6896,303,634,1161,1947],"class_list":["post-8201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-counterfeit","tag-doom","tag-estates","tag-lawsuit","tag-merch","tag-slams","tag-temu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8201","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=8201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8234,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8201\/revisions\/8234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}