Kanye West and Dame Dash Win Lawsuit Over Film Title

A New York federal judge ruled in favor of Kanye West and Dame Dash on Thursday (July 14), granting them victory in a lawsuit over their 2015 film Loisaidas. The word, which is Spanish slang for "lower east siders" has a registered trademark by Michael Medina who founded a Latin band by the same name. Medina filed an infringement suit over the film, but U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest dismissed the complaint stating that the film's title "clearly has artistic relevance."

What's more, Forrest's ruling takes into account that Medina's complaint "is devoid of concrete allegations that defendants attempted to suggest that plaintiff’s duo produced the work; to the contrary, as evidenced by Exhibit D to the operative complaint, materials promoting the film prominently informed the reader that it was 'Executive Produced: Dame Dash & Kanye West.'”

Forest wrote, that Medina "is entitled to protect his duo’s trademark, but not by staking his claim to a pre-existing term and then attempting to remove all expressive, non-explicitly-misleading uses from public circulation."

The film Loisaidas consists of eight episodes between four and 12 minutes long that focus on a violent turf war for control of the Lower East Side's drug business. Portions of the film are incorporate music, including one character who raps that he's "from Loisaidas." For further information on the ruling, the film in question and the precedents used in the case, visit The Hollywood Reporter.

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