Nipsey Hussle‘s brother Samiel “Blacc Sam” Asghedom has officially filed a lawsuit against Crips LLC.
The suit has been over a year in the making after the gang organization filed multiple trademarks for Nipsey’s slogan “The Marathon Continues” less than two months after Nip’s March 2019 death. After some communication, an agreement was reached in July of that year and a spokesperson for the Crips even released an apology.
After vowing “There will absolutely be no trademark legal battle between their organization and Blacc Sam,” Crips LLC corporate communications director William King Hollis told The Blast, “We are deeply sorry for any disruptions and melee that the trademark acquisition may have caused to his family, friends and fans. We realize that our actions may have been offensive and we have reached out to his family, respectively Nip’s sister, Samantha Smith.”
He also added that the organization “respectively vows to support the wishes of Lauren London and the Asghedom family,” but by June 2020, nothing had changed. After nearly one year, the Crips LLC never withdrew the filings and had stopped being responsive to any formal requests to put an end to it.
XXL confirmed through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that the organization planned to use the trademark for various things including “conducting youth sports programs; concert booking; developing educational manuals for others in the field of community organizing, gang prevention, gang intervention” and more.
Sam and Nipsey’s estate are seeking monetary damages and a judgment to force the Crips to destroy any merch they’ve made with the trademarks.