Robinhood has responded to Ice Cube lawsuit over the use of his image.
The stock trading app Robinhood recently made a splash in financial news. They continued strong growth amid controversies, and now they can add another one to the list as Ice Cube has filed a lawsuit against the company for using his image without his permission. That’s according to TMZ, who reported that the West Coast rapper filed a lawsuit against Robinhood. Ice Cube is alleging that Robinhood used his image in an ad that was included in the Robinhood Snacks newsletter this past month.
The former NWA member is accusing the company of using an image of him from a separate project that he was working on. That image somehow ended up being put on Robinhood Snacks. This was along with a blurb about stock corrections. Some of the ads also seemed to involve some of Ice Cube’s “Check Yourself” lyrics, as it stated, “Correct yourself before your wreck yourself.”
He is suing because he believes that his image and likeness can give the wrong impression and create a false narrative that he is associated with the brand and also that he endorsed it. He reiterated that this is simply not true. Also stated in the lawsuit was a strongly worded objection to the financial service company. In the paperwork, it was stated that the Robinhood App is the “antithesis of everything that Ice Cube stands for.” For good measure, they also describe the company as “horrible.”
Ice Cube believes, according to his legal documents, that he was intentionally put into the newsletter because his business partner Jeff Kwatinetz recently leveled some harsh criticism for the company, which he shared both publicly and in the lawsuit. Shortly after the stock trading app Robinhood froze trading on certain stocks like GameStop, in February 2021, Jeff Kwatinetz and Sean Burstyn filed a suit against the company on behalf of a thousand Robinhood users.
Robinhood has since responded saying the company license the photo of Ice Cube for non-commercial use in editorial for example as in their case in a blog post on the company’s blog.
