LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess) – After a long-running legal battle, rapper T.I. and singer-songwriter Tameka “Tiny” Harris-Cottle have secured a major victory in their intellectual property rights case against MGA Entertainment, a top US toy company. The jury in a California federal court ruled on Monday, September 23, that MGA must pay the couple over $71 million. This decision stems from claims that MGA’s LOL Surprise! OMG dolls copied the name, likeness, and trade dress of the OMG Girlz, a girl group developed by T.I. and Tiny.
The jury awarded the couple $17.8 million in actual damages and a hefty $53.6 million in punitive damages. Tiny expressed her surprise at the large sum, telling Rolling Stone, “I mean, wow. They did more than I thought they would… We wanted to thank the jurors so bad, but we didn’t get the opportunity.”
The lawsuit centered on seven dolls from MGA’s popular LOL Surprise! OMG line, which T.I. and Tiny argued closely resembled the OMG Girlz, a group launched in 2009 featuring Bahja “Beauty” Rodriguez, Breaunna “Babydoll” Womack, and Tiny’s daughter Zonnique “Star” Pullins. While the group disbanded in 2015, they reunited in 2023 and have been performing as part of the Queens of R&B tour alongside Xscape and SWV.
Tiny’s Instagram post comparing the dolls to the group sparked fan attention, ultimately leading to the couple filing a cease-and-desist letter in 2020. MGA sued the couple, claiming their allegations hurt the toy company’s business. In 2021, T.I. and Tiny countersued, accusing MGA of copyright infringement.
The case saw multiple trials, with the first ending in a mistrial and the second resulting in a victory for MGA. However, a recent Supreme Court ruling on an unrelated intellectual property case allowed T.I. and Tiny’s legal team to retry the case. The third and final trial ended in T.I. and Tiny’s favor, despite MGA’s founder, Isaac Larian, calling the OMG Girlz “extortionists” and denying their involvement in the doll design.
T.I. rejected claims that their lawsuit was a “money grab,” stating, “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.”
Following the verdict, Tiny expressed her gratitude in an emotional Instagram post: “Thank you so much to the jurors… To our amazing [legal] dream team, you guys killed it!! We owe u everything!”