BREAKING: Kanye West, Yeezy Apparel sued over intellectual theft
MyChannel, a minority-led video and e-commerce technology company, has filed a lawsuit against artist Kanye West and Yeezy Apparel for breaching an oral partnership agreement and stealing intellectual property that earned West $350 million per year on his Sunday Service video social media platform.
MeidasTouch co-founder Ben Meiselas, who is a top civil rights litigator, Geragos & Geragos, and Zumpano Patricios & Popok are representing MyChannel and claim that Mr. West and the Yeezy brand:
"breached the parties' oral partnership agreement"
"prevented MYC from earning millions of dollars in fees"
"failed to make the $10 million promised investment"
"encouraged MYC to invest millions of dollars of its own resources"
"violated MYC's non-disclosure agreement by using a copy-cat video e-commerce technology to drive sales of Kanye-branded merchandise on their Sunday Service video social media platform launched in 2019"
The lawsuit mentions that West admitted that the e-commerce technology helped him earn one million dollars a night in merch which equates to more than $350 million per year.
The money that Kanye has made off of MYC's technology comes after West begged Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to help him with his financial troubles in 2016 after going $53 million into debt, per Reuters.
Four years later, Kanye West is a billionaire and now friends with Zuckerberg.
MYC's cutting-edge technology:
"breaks down a video into its individual frames, sometimes numbering into the millions depending upon the video's length"
"mines the metadata embedded in each frame to isolate individual merchandise depicted"
"instantaneously searches the internet for a match, thereby allowing the user to immediately purchase the item without ever leaving the on-demand or live streaming video experience"
Anyone could see the value in MYC's technology. Imagine if Youtube had the ability for its consumers to buy anything they saw in a Youtube video instantly. The revenue streams would be limitless and corporations would be lining up out the door to sell products on the e-commerce platform.
West possibly came to the same conclusion early on in the supposed partnership with MYC as the lawsuit mentions West called the technology "Yzy Tech" when he introduced it to third parties and would call MyChannel "OurChannel" internally.
The lawsuit says that the famous rapper has not paid MYC a penny despite MYC personnel devoting "10,000 hours" to the partnership and having MYC personnel relocate full time to Yeezy's headquarters in California and then to Chicago all at West's convenience.
Based on West's actions, he has shown no ability to recognize what is right or wrong and only cares about what is best for himself financially. However, that shouldn't surprise anyone considering West's connection to President Donald Trump and West's attempt to run for President to siphon votes away from Joe Biden.
“I like Kanye very much,” Trump said via AZ Central. “No, I have nothing to do with him getting on the ballot. We'll have to see what happens. We'll see if he gets on the ballot. But I'm not involved.”
The same AZ Central article mentioned that West was paying $8 per signature to get on the ballot and that Republican operatives, some with ties to Trump, had been working on West's campaign to help him get on the ballot in many states.
West went from millions in debt and asking Zuckerberg for help (who questionably has a deal with Trump too), to becoming a billionaire and helping Trump win the 2020 election.
If someone is in a lot of debt, then associates with figures like Trump and Zuckerberg and suddenly becomes rich, a red flag should go off in everyone's head.
Wake up America, don't get fooled.
Here is a copy of the lawsuit mentioned:
Complaint.MyChannel
.pdf
Download PDF • 12.45MB
About Ryan Lipton:
Ryan is a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill majoring in Business Journalism. He has written in the past for SB Nation's Silver and Black Pride, USA Today Sports Media Group, North Carolina Business News Wire, the Daily Tar Heel, and has worked with Ice Cube's BIG3 basketball league.
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