Ronald Isley keeps the Isley Brothers band name after a court fight ends

Ronald Isley keeps the trademark to the group's name The Isley Brothers after a three-year court fight with the estate of his late brother Rudolph ended in a dismissal, Music Business Worldwide reported on August 14, with AllHipHop reporting the same outcome on August 17. Counsel for both sides filed a stipulation of dismissal in Chicago federal court, closing the case with prejudice, so the estate cannot bring the same claims again.

Rudolph Isley filed the original lawsuit in March 2023, arguing that he and Ronald remained equal co-owners of the group's name after their brother O'Kelly died in 1986, and that Ronald had applied to register the trademark in his own name alone without Rudolph's knowledge. Ronald's side argued Rudolph had not performed with the group since 1989 and that the name belonged to whoever kept using it in the business.

A judge initially let the case proceed, citing Rudolph's continued involvement in the group's affairs, including a multi-million-dollar publishing deal in 2018 and a licensing deal that put the Isley Brothers song Shout in a 2023 Super Bowl commercial. Rudolph died in October 2023, aged 84, and his estate took over as plaintiff before this week's settlement, which sets out no ownership split and discloses no payment between the parties.

The case, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and docketed 1:23-cv-01720, turned on a 2021 trademark application: Ronald applied to register the mark in his own name that November, and the US Patent and Trademark Office granted it the following August, with a priority date reaching back to the group's 1954 founding in Cincinnati.

In an August 2023 ruling, Judge Thomas M. Durkin let the case proceed on narrower grounds than Rudolph's team had argued. Any three-way partnership between the brothers had legally dissolved when O'Kelly died in 1986, Durkin found, but the complaint described enough joint activity between Ronald and Rudolph afterward to infer a two-man partnership that could still hold rights to the name.

Ronald said little publicly through the fight beyond a statement after his brother's death: "Our family will miss him. But I know he's in a better place." The group's complaint had noted its induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2022, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014, and new music charting on the Hot 100 across six different decades, from 1959's Shout to a 2022 Beyonce-featuring remake of Make Me Say It Again Girl.

The case never reached a ruling on who owned the mark, and Ronald's 2022 registration stands unchanged. The group's complaint had put its US sales at more than 18 million units and noted its 1992 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.