Source: Jerritt Clark / Getty
The leader of the JACKBOYS is being accused of jacking a video game company’s controller design.
It’s not lit if this is indeed true.
Page Six is reporting that Travis Scott and Cactus Jack were slapped with a lawsuit by KontrolFreek. The company claims they approached the rapper to design branded gaming merchandise as part of a tie-in to his record-breaking Fortnite virtual performances that saw 12 million fans log into the game to watch. While nothing materialized between Scott and KontrolFreek, the company claims that the “Sicko Mode” rapper went ahead and jacked the company’s copyright-protected designs and even sold a low-quality controller.
Per Page Six:
“KontrolFreek makes high-performance thumbsticks (translation for non-gamers: those joysticks you operate with your thumbs). The company contends in its lawsuit that Scott and Cactus Jack “reproduced KontrolFreek’s copyright-protected” photos of its products and merely “modified” the images, even “superimposing the Cactus Jack logo/design over the top of the KontrolFreek thumbstick” to hawk them for the Fortnight concerts.”
“The gaming company — which has a community called FreekNation of over 4 million gamers — claims that Scott’s ads caused confusion that the rapper and KontrolFreek were working together. The company further claims in court docs that Scott and Cactus Jack had not yet manufactured the alleged knock-offs, but that after KontrolFreek contacted them about its concerns in May, “Defendants asked if KontrolFreek would be willing to manufacture the Cactus Jack Thumbsticks for Defendants, and at no cost.”
“The parties did not speak again. But KontrolFreek claims that when fans later received the Cactus Jack-branded controllers, consumers complained online about “the poor quality.” One buyer apparently commented that the Cactus Jack thumbsticks “were not like ‘normal kontrol freeks’ [sic].”
“KontrolFreek also claims in its suit that the packaging for Scott’s product was in copyright violation — including using the KontrolFreek slogan plus “identical bullet points” touting the thumbsticks’ merits.”
As part of the lawsuit, KontrolFreek’s lawyers revealed that the company wants Scott to hand over any profits they made off the joysticks and controllers and destroy the remaining stock.
Reps for Travis Scott has not responded to Page Six’s reporting.
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Photo: Jerritt Clark / Getty
