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T.I. and Tameka "Tiny" Harris secured $71 million from toymaker MGA Entertainment following a strenuous legal battle.
On Monday, September 23, a jury decided that the company violated the intellectual property rights of their girl group, the OMG Girlz, with over a dozen of their L.O.L. Surprise! O.M.G. dolls. According to Rolling Stone, MGA “infringed on the trade dress and misappropriated the name, image, and likeness" of the female-driven group T.I. and Tiny founded in 2009. The couple called out the company several times before and during the trial for making dolls that looked eerily similar to Tiny’s eldest daughter, Zonnique Pullins and her bandmates Bahja Rodriguez and Breaunna Womack.
“It was a fight. It was a hell of a fight,” she said after the hearing. “We couldn’t be more happy.”
“We wanted to thank the jurors for just seeing us through this, and just believing in what we said," she added. "They heard our story and they knew we wasn’t lying. It’s amazing."
During the trial, lawyers for T.I. and Tiny argued that MGA promoted at least seven dolls that looked almost exactly like the outfits and hairstyles the OMG Girlz wore at particular public events. MGA founder Isaac Larian denied the allegations. He also maintained that the dolls weren't inspired by the group at all and even labeled the Harris family as "extortionists."
“I think that was a bully tactic,” T.I. said about the MGA attorneys. “[They were] trying to paint me as the bad guy when really, they were the [bad] ones. 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. That kind of condescension comes from when you’re not really in touch with the reality of culture after you’ve gone so long kind of having it your way and nobody really standing up and speaking up against you.”
T.I. and Tiny won $17,872,359 in damages plus $53,616,759 in punitive damages. See below for the side-by-side photos of the dolls and the OMG Girlz.