The estate of late Mobb Deep rapper Prodigy, surviving member Havoc, and the streetwear brand Supreme have been sued in New York District Court for trademark infringement and unfair competition, Billboard reports and documents viewed by Pitchfork confirm. A complaint filed by plaintiff Bush Baby Zamagate—the label that owns the intellectual property of the New York hardcore band Sick of It All—accuses the rap group and clothing brand of copying the band’s dragon logo on T-shirts and hats for a Summer 2023 capsule collection.

In the suit, Bush Baby Zamagate says Supreme and Mobb Deep are guilty of “willful infringement and unfair competition” from “improper and illegal use of a nearly identical logo mark to Plaintiff’s inherently distinctive, incontestable, and famous logo.” They are asking the court to prevent the defendants from using the logo “or any other mark or marks confusingly similar thereto,” a full accounting of revenue generated using the logo, the delivery of any products with the logo for destruction and cease of online use, compensatory damages, and attorney’s fees. Summons were issued to defendants last week; they have 21 days to respond to the suit. Pitchfork has reached out to representatives of Bush Baby Zamagate, Supreme, and Havoc for comment.

Supreme announced its Mobb Deep collaboration in June, featuring T-shirts screen-printed with a dragon logo and “SUPREME” in all caps on the front, with “Drop a Gem on ‘Em” printed on the back, and a baseball cap with the same dragon logo featured prominently on the front. A news post on Hypebeast.com cited in the suit reported that the logo had been dubbed the “Alleyway Crew” dragon, and was “borrowed from hardcore punk band Sick of It All.” “Alleyway Crew Tapes” is referenced on the J-card for Sick of it All’s self-titled 1986 cassette, which features a drawing of Calvin from Bill Watterson’s comic strip Calvin & Hobbes.

The suit claims Sick of It All has used the dragon logo since 1987 and has common law rights over the mark, which can be seen in the liner notes for the band’s 1989 album Blood, Sweat and No Tears, as well as on the cover of the 1991 EP We Stand Alone. The first known instance of the dragon logo appearing on Mobb Deep products was the 12” promo single for “Drop a Gem on ‘Em,” distributed to DJs in 1996 to promote their forthcoming album Hell on Earth. The song was written as a response to Tupac Shakur’s infamous diss track “Hit ‘Em Up.” In 2000, Sick of It All covered Mobb Deep’s “Survival of the Fittest” for the Loud Records compilation Loud Rocks.

In 2003, Bush Baby Zamagate issued a cease and desist order to the group’s lawyers after finding the logo on a promotional flyer promoting a forthcoming Big Noyd album included with Free Agents: The Murda Mixtape, requesting receipt of any items using the logo and a full accounting of any sales. The logo does not appear to have been included in Big Noyd’s 2003 album Only the Strong, but Bush Baby Zamagate claims they never received any materials or record of sales of items with the logo. A review of United States Patent and Trademark Office records show that the logo was first registered by Bush Baby Zamagate, Inc. in 2004 and renewed in 2013.

Both Mobb Deep and Sick of It All hail from Queens, NY. In a 2011 interview with the now-defunct blog for the streetwear company Mishka NYC, Prodigy says he first saw the dragon as a teenager, on the wall of a tattoo parlor on Long Island:

“Basically, when I was 14 or 15, there was this tattoo parlor in [Elmont, NY] off [Hempstead] Turnpike and I had walked in there to get my first tattoo. There was this dragon on the wall and I didn’t know what it was, I just thought it looked ill, I was mad young and I had always wanted something on my hand. I prolly seen it on some of those L.A. gang movies like Colors. I thought’d be cool, it’d look like some tough shit. So I told the dude put that on my hand. When me and Hav started Mobb Deep, we turned it into the lil clique thing.

We wanted to turn it into the logo for Mobb Deep, but, then we got a cease and desist letter in the mail. It was like “yo, you using our logo” from Sick of It All’s lawyer and we was like what the fuck? N—as was like “P, where you get that?” And I was like, that was just some random shit! We didn’t even know, we was just young kids.”

Danny Singer (aka Danny Diablo), a former roadie for Sick of It All in the ’90s, tells Pitchfork that he’s seen the band use the logo since at least 1987. The band and their friends, known as the “Alleyway Crew,” sported tattoos of the logo, which they found on a tattoo flash sheet in an unnamed shop. “There’s at least 40 of those guys with that tattoo,” he says.

Supreme has previously collaborated with Mobb Deep, first in 2011 on a portrait T-shirt, and again in their S/S 2018 and S/S 2021 collections. Prodigy died in 2017 at 42 after a life-long battle with sickle cell anemia. In July, Havoc announced on Talib Kweli’s podcast that he was working on a new Mobb Deep album with archived Prodigy vocals released by his family.