Don’t expect to be able to buy Kanye West’s “White Lives Matters” t-shirts. The former billionaire is unable to legally sell the shirts because they are owned by another Black man.
Quinton Ward and Ramses Ja spoke with ABC News and trademarked the phrase to keep the phrase from being used on commercial items.
The two men host the Civic Cipher show and revealed a fan of the show shared the idea to acquire the trademark so it could not create additional harm to Black and Brown communities.
“I recognize that one of two things could happen. Someone could come to our lawyer or us and say, ‘Hey, you have the exclusive right to make and sell those clothes in the United States of America. I would like to buy the trademark for millions of dollars,’” Ja said in a separate interview with Capital B news. “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.”
Kanye has not reached out about the matter.
