Compton Records, doing business as Ruthless Records and owned by N.W.A’s Eazy-E’s widow Tomica Woods-Wright, yesterday filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Arnold E. White (Bigg A) and Eric Darnel Wright, aka Lil Eazy-E (technically Woods-Wright’s step-son) who has allegedly launched a company with the same Ruthless Records name.
The suit claims that the defendants have over the last year infringed on the Ruthless Records trademark operating the website www.ruthlessrecordsinc.com, which uses the Ruthless name and sells Ruthless merch, despite what the filing claims are a rejected application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to trademark Ruthless Records. The lawsuit describes the defendants’ conduct as “malicious, fraudulent, deliberate, and/or willful.”
The suit filed byLoeb & Loeb LLP, states that Compton Records owns the rights to the name Ruthless Records, the label founded by Eric “Eazy-E” Wright in Compton, California in 1986. The filing alleges that that label, whose acts included N.W.A, Eazy-E, and Bone-Thugs-n-Harmony, has been run continuously by Woods-Wright and her company Comptown Records, Inc., which also owns the N.W.A. trademark and which is also in dispute.
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