A federal judge has given his blessing for the estate of MF Doom to move forward with reworked trademark infringement claims against Temu over counterfeit merch bearing the late hip-hop legend’s name and signature mask.
Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. threw out the first version of the lawsuit in December after finding that it portrayed Temu only as a pass-through online marketplace for independent sellers in China. MF Doom’s estate then fleshed out the complaint to allege that Temu actually takes an active role in curating and shipping the low-priced goods sold on its site — and the judge says these additions now make the lawsuit viable.
“As amended, the complaint plausibly alleges that Temu takes title to goods or otherwise exercises sufficient control over the allegedly infringing products to be liable for their sale,” wrote Judge Blumenfeld on Tuesday (Feb. 10). “Plaintiff alleges that Temu holds itself out as the seller, identifies products as ‘procured by Temu,’ creates advertising, receives manufacturer pitches, and jointly controls pricing, logistics and importation.”
Temu forcefully maintains that it is just an intermediary and thus cannot be held liable for any alleged trademark infringement by its vendors. Judge Blumenfeld has not yet made any factual findings on this question; he merely decided that, as written, the lawsuit is legally sound enough that the MF Doom estate can move into the evidence discovery phase.
A lawyer for the estate, Jeff Gluck, told Billboard on Thursday (Feb. 12) that the ruling is an “important and significant victory.” A rep for Temu did not return a request for comment.
MF Doom (real name Daniel Dumile) died in 2020, and his family now manages the British rapper’s catalog and intellectual property. The estate sued Temu this past summer, alleging the Chinese budget seller, whose name derives from the motto “Team Up, Price Down,” is flooding the market with knock-off t-shirts, hats and posters bearing MF Doom’s iconic mask and other trademarks.
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The same lawyers representing the MF Doom estate filed a similar counterfeiting lawsuit against Temu last year on behalf of Twenty One Pilots. The two cases represent a new front in the music industry’s legal war on phony merch sales, which have skyrocketed in recent years.
Artists and their teams have typically pursued legal action against counterfeiters themselves. Harry Styles, for one, brought litigation against online bootleggers in 2023, while the official merch partners for Benson Boone and Tate McRae recently went to court to stop parking lot t-shirt sellers at live shows.
Both the MF Doom estate and Twenty One Pilots are trying a new tack by targeting a corporate sales platform rather than individual counterfeiters, who are often difficult to track down and hold financially accountable. However, as the back-and-forth dismissal rulings in the MF Doom case have demonstrated, it remains an open question whether it will be possible to establish liability for platforms like Temu under U.S. trademark law.
