Photo of Jay-Z.
Jay-Z and the Iconix Brand Group have settled their legal dispute that has been ongoing for two and a half years.
The settlement, which was concluded in a U.S. District Court in New York, calls for Jay-Z’s Roc Nation to buy back a portion of the rights to its Rocawear clothing brand for $15 million.
The first of many lawsuits in this dispute came in May of 2017. That’s when Iconix claimed Roc Nation was undermining the licensing rights it bought from them for $204 million in 2007. Also named in the suit were Jay-Z himself, Roc Nation Apparel Group (RNAG), Major League Baseball and others. It was in response to RNAG partnering with a clothing company called New Era to produce baseball caps with the Roc Nation logo.
That same year, Roc Nation countersued Iconix, claiming that the 2007 deal with it was only for the Rocawear brand, which Jay-Z started in 1999 with Damon “Dame” Dash, who co-founded Roc-A-Fella Records with him. They further claimed that, while Iconix eventually negotiated a separate deal for Roc Nation licensing, this deal had expired prior to RNAG concluding its deal with New Era.
In March of the following year, Roc Nation filed another suit against Iconix, claiming that the brand was trying to undermine its own licensing rights by rewriting their original agreement. RNAG also asked the court to not only dismiss Iconix’ original suit but also award it damages for lost profits, lost goodwill and harm done to its reputation.
But the suing did not end there.
In June of this year, Roc Nation filed yet another lawsuit against Iconix. This time Roc Nation accused Iconix of falsifying its financial reports prior to negotiating the original deal back in 2007. A few years before this lawsuit, the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) had separately launched an investigation into Iconix accounting practices.
So far, neither Roc Nation nor Iconix have commented on the settlement.