Kanye stirred a wave of controversy after unveiling "White Lives Matter" t-shirts at his surprise YZYSZY9 fashion show at Paris Fashion Week earlier this year. Amid the backlash, Kanye defended the design, telling Piers Morgan, "There’s nobody that gets judged more than a straight white male."
Now, it's been revealed that Kanye can't legally sell the "White Lives Matter" shirts because two Black men own the trademark. Civic Cipher radio show hosts Ramses Ja and Quinton Ward revealed during an interview on Big Boy's Neighborhood that they now own the trademark.
Ramses explained, "The way the law works is either you're owning phrases, or it's up for grabs for people to make money off them. This person who first procured it didn't really love owning it, because the purpose was not necessarily to get rich off of it; the purpose was to make sure that other people didn't get rich off of that pain."
He added "If we were to sell that trademark, for whatever amount of money, we could donate that money to causes that we feel would benefit Black people, like the NAACP or Black Lives Matter organizations. Because, realistically, we cannot stop the shirts from being made right now. We can write cease and desist to people selling these shirts right now, but that is a big monster that requires teams of lawyers and thousands of dollars that we do not have."
