{"id":817575,"date":"2025-01-06T09:11:59","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T15:11:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/06\/three-years-later-universal-music-settles-trademark-lawsuit-filed-against-investment-platform-republic\/"},"modified":"2025-01-06T09:11:59","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T15:11:59","slug":"three-years-later-universal-music-settles-trademark-lawsuit-filed-against-investment-platform-republic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/06\/three-years-later-universal-music-settles-trademark-lawsuit-filed-against-investment-platform-republic\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Years Later, Universal Music Settles Trademark Lawsuit Filed Against Investment Platform Republic"},"content":{"rendered":"
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More than three years later, Universal Music Group (UMG) and the company behind Republic \u2013 the investment platform, not the label \u2013 have officially put their legal battle to rest.<\/h2>\n

The involved parties just recently informed the court that they\u2019d hammered out a settlement in their years-old trademark dispute. As we covered<\/a> back in November 2021 \u2013 when, among other things, non-fungible tokens were still attracting ample investments<\/a> \u2013 a company called OpenDeal operates as Republic.<\/p>\n

By its own description, the latter \u201cis a financial technology firm specializing in private market investment services.\u201d And those services, designed to connect startups with individual backers, expanded in October 2021 to also include music NFTs.<\/p>\n

Republic declared as much in a formal release<\/a> touting initial projects from Lil Pump and KSHMR. While it perhaps goes without saying in light of the action, the music expansion didn\u2019t sit right with the Republic Records parent UMG, which promptly called on the platform to \u201coperate its new music-related services under a non-REPUBLIC name,\u201d per legal docs.<\/p>\n

Republic\/OpenDeal was evidently uninterested in doing so \u2013 and willing to spend multiple years defending its position. Several twists and turns later, however, a December 11th, 2024, in-person settlement conference saw UMG and OpenDeal reach a resolution.<\/h4>\n

Acting on the development, the presiding judge then dismissed the case without costs and without prejudice, indicating<\/a> that the suit could be reopened within 60 days \u201cif the settlement is not consummated.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear what this settlement encompasses; the terms thereof don\u2019t appear to have been publicly revealed. Focusing on what we do know, Republic\u2019s music-investments page was still live at the time of writing, albeit at a slightly different web address than in October 2021.<\/p>\n

(Separately, sometime following the UMG suit\u2019s filing, the main Republic website traded its .co top-level domain for the .com option.)<\/p>\n

Despite the Republic trademark showdown\u2019s seeming end, Universal Music remains embroiled in a variety of different suits \u2013 including two interesting, relatively new actions. The first was filed by Limp Bizkit<\/a> and others against the major in October over an alleged failure to pay millions in due royalties. A dismissal-minded UMG fired back<\/a> in late November, criticizing the $200 million complaint as \u201cfiction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Universal Music itself levied<\/a> the second of the noteworthy actions last month against TuneCore and its Believe parent. The defendant companies, UMG claimed in more words, had committed \u201crampant piracy\u201d and copyright infringement by distributing and collecting royalties on unauthorized altered versions of various protected recordings.<\/p>\n<\/section><\/div>\n

Qiana Fleishman
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than three years later, Universal Music Group (UMG) and the company behind Republic \u2013 the investment platform, not the label \u2013 have officially put their legal battle to rest. The involved parties just recently informed the court that they\u2019d hammered out a settlement in their years-old trademark dispute. As we covered back in November<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":817576,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1862,725],"tags":[6791,5513],"class_list":{"0":"post-817575","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-three","8":"category-years","9":"tag-three","10":"tag-years"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}