Lizzo’s DNA test came back she’s “100% that bitch.”
via: People
According to a United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) filing obtained by PEOPLE, the Grammy Award winner, 34, has succeeded in registering “100% THAT Bitch” as a federal trademark for clothing, giving her exclusive rights to the “Truth Hurts” lyric for apparel.
“Considering the entirety of the record, we find that most consumers would perceive 100% THAT Bitch used on the goods in the application as associated with Lizzo rather than as a commonplace expression,” reads Thursday’s decision.
The USPTO’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) reversed its decision after rejecting Lizzo’s application last year.
An examining attorney previously argued that the phrase is “a message of self-confidence and female empowerment,” which fans “may associate” with Lizzo, but “does not entitle the applicant as a singer-songwriter to appropriate for itself exclusive use of the phrase.”
In response, the Special artist’s attorneys presented multiple references to the phrase on social media, e-commerce and event sites, most of which also included “unauthorized references” to Lizzo by name.
“All of the evidence of record regarding third-party use of 100% THAT Bitch is from 2017 or later,” the TTAB explained. “The Urban Dictionary entry for the term is dated June 12, 2019. Thus, the evidence is contemporaneous with or subsequent to the release of Lizzo’s hit single ‘Truth Hurts.’
“There is no evidence of use of the term 100% THAT Bitch prior to 2017, so we have no indication that the proposed mark already was ‘widely used, over a long period of time and by a large number of merchandisers’ before Lizzo popularized it,” they added.
Although Lizzo originally dropped “Truth Hurts” in 2017, she re-released the single with her third studio album Cuz I Love You (2019), giving it the steam it needed to earn her first Billboard No. 1 song and one of her first Grammy Awards for best pop solo performance.
Lizzo told PEOPLE of the song’s belated success: “The day I released ‘Truth Hurts’ was probably one of the darkest days I’ve had ever in my career. I remember thinking, ‘If I quit music now, nobody would notice. This is my best song ever, and nobody cares.’
“I was like, ‘F— it, I’m done,'” Lizzo said in 2019. “And a lot of people rallied; my producer, my publicist and my family, they were like, ‘Just keep going because this is the darkest before the dawn’ … Who would have thunk?”
