Jelly Roll is being sued by wedding band called Jellyroll who claim the country rapper is violating their trademark rights.
In a lawsuit filed Monday (April 8) in federal court, Jellyroll frontman Kurt Titchenell accuses Jelly Roll (real name Jason DeFord) of infringing his trademark to the name he has been using for more than 40 years.
Titchenell's lawsuit argues that Jelly Roll’s popularity — he was recently the big winner at the CMT Music Awards — has confused people and made it more difficult to differentiate the Best Wedding Band in Philadelphia from him.
“Prior to the defendant’s recent rise in notoriety, a search of the name of Jellyroll … returned references to the plaintiff,” Titchenell's attorneys wrote in the complaint (via Billboard). “Now, any such search on Google returns multiple references to defendant, perhaps as many as 18-20 references, before any reference to plaintiff’s entertainment dance band known as Jellyroll can be found.”
Jelly Roll has previously admitted that his mother gave him the nickname when he was a kid. In 2022 he told The Bobby Bones Show, “My mother named me that whenever I was a little chubby kid. Been fat my whole life. I spent the next 30 years trying to grow into the name, I think I’ve done it. I obviously look the part…It just stuck.”
The lawsuit says that Titchenell's lawyers did send a cease-and-desist letter to the rapper back in February, and the two sides had “several conversations” about the name. However, no resolution was met. In fact, Jelly Roll's team questioned whether there was even an issue at hand. “At one point defendant’s counsel inquired as to whether defendant really was in competition with plaintiff," it reads.
With Jelly Roll's upcoming concert at the Wells Fargo Center in Titchenell's hometown of Philadelphia, he hopes some action will be taken before the October 2 show.
“Despite his receipt of a demand to cease and desist using plaintiff’s registered service mark, defendant has ignored this demand and continues to use plaintiff’s registered service mark knowing that it continues to irreparably harm plaintiff but has nevertheless callously disregarded the rights of plaintiff to his own service mark,” Titchenell’s attorneys add.
This isn't the first case of trademark infringement that Jelly Roll as faced. He was previously served a cease-and-desist letter after using the restaurant Waffle House's name in the title of his 2013 mixtape, Whiskey, Weed & Waffle House.