Dr. Dre's estranged wife Nicole Young sues him for co-ownership of the "Dr. Dre" name
Back in 2018, Dr. Dre lost a trademark dispute when he tried to stop a gynecologist from using the name Dr. Drai, claiming that he was trying to “trade on the goodwill” of the “Dr. Dre” brand for his own benefit. Dr. Drai countered by saying that any association with the rapper would actually hurt him, given the allegations about Dre’s treatment of women, and the U.S. Patent And Trademark Office eventually sided with Drai and dismissed Dre’s suit. Now, Dr. Dre is facing a new lawsuit that claims he doesn’t even own that name.
This comes from Page Six, which says Dre’s estranged wife, Nicole Young, has filed a lawsuit against him that claims she co-owns both the trademark on the “Dr. Dre” name and on his album The Chronic. Dre and Young were married for over two decades, but as the suit puts it, he “forced [her] out of their family home on or about April 2, 2020.” At that point—again, according to the suit—Dre moved to secretly create an “asset holding company” to control his “valuable trademarks” that only he would control, despite the fact that Dre and Young are “presumed” to control these trademarks “jointly” due to how the law works in California.
This is all part of what sounds like it will be an unsurprisingly pricey and contentious divorce, with the Page Six story noting that Young has previously asked for Dre to pay her $2 million per month and refused to give him some items that he left behind at the Malibu house where she’s staying because—as someone who is worth $1 billion—Dre can just buy new things.