RZA is seeking to protect the integrity of the Wu-Tang Clan brand.
According to documents obtained by AllHipHop, RZA has sued various bootleggers for selling merchandise featuring the Wu-Tang Clan logo. The defendants are believed to be operating out of China or other foreign jurisdictions with lax trademark enforcement.
RZA is targeting e-commerce store operators for allegedly using Wu-Tang’s trademarks to make their online operations seem legitimate. The lawsuit accuses the bootleggers of trademark infringement, counterfeiting and false designation of origin.
“Many Defendants also deceive unknowing consumers by using the Wu-Tang Clan Trademarks without authorization within the content, text, and/or meta tags of their e-commerce stores to attract various search engines crawling the Internet looking for e-commerce stores relevant to consumer searches for Wu-Tang Clan products,” the lawsuit notes. “Other e-commerce stores operating under the Seller Aliases omit using the Wu-Tang Clan Trademarks in the item title to evade enforcement efforts while using strategic item titles and descriptions that will trigger their listings when consumers are searching for Wu-Tang Clan products.”
The legal action aims to prevent the bootleggers from selling any more reproductions, counterfeit copies or colorable imitations of Wu-Tang products. RZA’s asking online marketplace platforms such as Amazon, eBay and AliExpress to take down advertisements for these unauthorized sellers.
RZA is seeking all profits from the bootleg Wu-Tang merch and damages for trademark infringement. As an alternative, he’s asked to be awarded $2,000,000 for “each and every use” of the Wu-Tang trademarks.