Musicians T.I. & Tiny Win $71 Million Lawsuit Against The Maker Of L.O.L. Surprise! Dolls — ‘They Expected Us To Not Have The Audacity To Stand Up & Speak For Ourselves’
They claimed the dolls were modeled on the likeness of their music group OMG Girlz, and a jury unanimously agreed.
Silvia Elizabeth Pangaro | Shutterstock After a lengthy legal battle that began in 2020, married musicians T.I. and Tiny, aka. Clifford Harris and Tameka Cottle-Harris, have at last prevailed in their lawsuit against the entertainment company they say stole their intellectual property and the likenesses of their girl group, OMG Girlz.
The verdict is a triumph for the couple, who were repeatedly accused of using the lawsuit as a "money grab." In the end, a jury firmly disagreed and unanimously delivered an enormous eight-figure settlement.
T.I. and Tiny have been awarded $71 million after a jury ruled MGA Entertainment violated their intellectual property with its L.O.L. Surprise! Dolls line.
After initially filing suit in 2020, T.I. and Tiny's case at last arrived in a federal courtroom three weeks ago in Santa Ana, California. The music mogul couple alleged that MGA Entertainment, makers of several toy lines including Bratz and Baby Born, stole their intellectual property for its wildly popular L.O.L. Surprise! Dolls.
MGA's attorneys have repeatedly claimed that the lawsuit was nothing more than a "money grab," and many online have accused the couple of being cash-strapped opportunists.
But a jury firmly disagreed and awarded T.I., best known for his hit with Rihanna, "Live Your Life," and Tiny, one of the writers of hits like "No Scrubs" and a former member of '90s R&B group Xscape, $17.9 million in compensatory damages for things like lost revenue, and another $53.6 million in punitive damages.
The jury unanimously ruled that MGA stole the likeness of T.I. and Tiny's girl group OMG Girlz for the dolls.
At issue was MGA's line of L.O.L! Surprise Dolls, a brightly colored series of girl dolls which T.I. & Tiny alleged used the likenesses of the members of the girl group they manage, OMG Girlz, which includes Tiny's daughter Zonnique “Star” Pullins, Bahja Rodriguez and Breaunna Womack.
Both musicians have posted multiple side-by-side images of the doll line and the members of their girl group, most recently in an Instagram post last week in which Tiny captioned, "Do these dolls look familiar?"
The similarities are hard to miss, with one doll having copycat hair to one of the girl group members and another having a nearly identical outfit to one worn in a performance by the group.
In the caption of her post, Tiny wrote that the outfit that appeared to have been copied was custom-made and was just one of several that were infringed upon. Four consumers also said in sworn testimony that they had assumed the L.O.L Surprise! Dolls were essentially a product tie-in with the OMG Girlz due to the similarities, according to one of T.I. and Tiny's attorneys.
In the end, the jury agreed that the similarities were too obvious to ignore. They unanimously ruled that 15 dolls among 32 in the L.O.L. Surprise! Line either infringed on the OMG Girlz' trade dress or the group's name, image, and likeness. Other dolls in the line were found to have infringed on Beyoncé's and Lady Gaga's likenesses as well.
T.I. and Tiny themselves were surprised by the unanimous verdict and the size of their award.
In an Instagram live post following the verdict, Tiny said she and T.I. "did this for the city, we did this for the culture," adding that they "couldn't be more happy" about the verdict that left both of them surprised.
"They did more than I thought they would,” Tiny later told Rolling Stone. “I would have been happy with whatever. They blessed us more than beyond."
As for T.I., he characterized MGA's handling of the case as a grave miscalculation essentially borne of privilege. In addition to accusing T.I. and Tiny of trying for a "money grab," MGA founder Isaac Larian also called T.I., Tiny, and the OMG Girlz "extortionists" during the trial.
"That kind of condescension comes from when you’re not really in touch with the reality of culture," he told Rolling Stone, "after you’ve gone so long kind of having it your way and nobody really standing up and speaking up against you.”
And he says MGA severely underestimated him, Tiny, and the members of OMG Girlz when they attempted to smear them in court.
"I think that was a bully tactic," he said. "They were the ones that came and ripped us off, and [they] expected us to not have the audacity to stand up and speak for ourselves." How wrong they were — to the tune of $71 million dollars.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.