LeBron James' media company Uninterrupted could potentially jump into a legal battle with the University of Alabama. According to ESPN, the company is alleging that 'Bama has taken its intellectual property.
What exactly has the Crimson Tide taken from LeBron's company? Well, last week the official Twitter account for the university's football team tweeted out a trailer for a new show titled Shop Talk that showed Julio Jones chopping it up with Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban in the Bama Cuts barbershop at the team's athletic facility among other football players.
If you are unfamiliar, Uninterrupted airs its own show, The Shop, which premiered during the 2017 NBA Finals and uses an almost identical premise. LeBron and friends re-create the atmosphere of barbershop banter with a special guest while they get haircuts. Two episodes have aired already featuring guests like Draymond Green and 2 Chainz.
LeBron and company are not exactly flattered that Alabama thought they could attempt to blatantly rip their original idea and sent them what essentially is a cease-and-desist letter to discontinue the series in its current format. A statement obtained by ESPN from Uninterrupted to the University of Alabama partially reads, "Your continued exploitation of Shop Talk infringes Uninterrupted's copyright, trademark rights and other valuable intellectual property rights in The Shop and significantly damages Uninterrupted's commercial prospects for The Shop."
While no official legal documentation has been filed yet by James' company, it has to extend an invitation for a conversation before taking any further legal action.
