Drake and 21 Savage appear to have shelled out big bucks to settle their fake Vogue cover lawsuit that was filed after they pretended to be on the front page of Vogue while promoting their album, Her Loss.
On Thursday, TMZ reported that magazine publisher Condé Nast, the owner of Vogue and the plaintiff in the lawsuit, and the rappers came to an out-of-court settlement.
The lawsuit, filed on December 8, came following Drake’s post to Instagram announcing that he and Savage made hip-hop history as the first rappers to be on the Vogue cover. The rapper also went to the extent of tagging editor Anna Wintour to make the gimmick believable.
Vogue’s parent company later filed a lawsuit on November 8 and was granted an injunction against the rappers, who promptly removed the images. In its lawsuit, Condé Nast had claimed that it owned the trademark for Vogue and that Drake and 21 Savage had infringed the company’s marks.
The company had sued on a series of legal grounds, including federal and common law trademark infringement, false designation of origin and unfair competition, false endorsement, dilution, [and] false advertising, which the judge found in favor of the company in granting the injunction.
In granting the injunction, the judge said that the rapper’s infringement confused “consumers about the origin, sponsorship, or approval” of the album and also misled “consumers to believe that these are genuine and authentic materials associated with Condé Nast and Vogue.”
In the meantime, it’s unclear the details of the settlement, but Condé Nast had sued the rappers for $4 million in damages.
Drake and 21 were represented by attorney Larry Stein, but neither has addressed the lawsuit publicly. The lawsuit coming to an end signals favor for Drake in a civil trial. The artist also recently found favor in a criminal trial- the XXXTentacion trial in which a defense attorney asked the court to force Drake to sit for a deposition since fans thought he might have something to do with XXX’s death and could be a suspect.
In the end, the rapper’s lawyer Brad Cohen managed to get the judge to set aside the motion demanding the rapper turn up physically in court or face contempt of court, and he has volunteered to sit for the deposition, which the judge is allowing to be limited in scope and done via zoom.
