A company's 2015 agreement to market apparel for hip-hop group Migos did not give it a right to capitalize on the Migos name in light of the group's recent success, a Manhattan Supreme Court judge ruled earlier this month.

Justice O. Peter Sherwood knocked out key claims in a lawsuit by Rocawear co-founder Norton Cher's YRN LLC, which sued the Georgia-based trio and Migos LLC for breach of contract in May 2018.

According to the complaint, the firm acquired the trademarks to "Y.R.N." and "Yung Rich Nation" in March 2015, with the goal of marketing clothing and accessories associated with Migo's then-forthcoming single and album by the same names. The suit alleged that the performers—Quavious Marshall, Kiari Cephus and Kirshnik Ball—and managers Jerel Nance and Pierre Thomas had agreed not to compete with the company by marketing apparel with the Migos name.

The group, however, responded that it was merely prohibited from selling competing "YRN" apparel and that the firm never had a right to the Migos name.

Migos entered a new relationship with a subsidiary of Universal Music Group to sell products with the Migos name in spring 2017, shortly after its song "Bad and Boujee" achieved widespread commercial success. Migos' next album, "Culture," months later debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 list, where it continued to top the charts until late 2018.

According to Cher, the 2015 agreement with Migos was meant to prevent the group from selling merchandise that would "compete with and cannibalize" sales from YRN apparel.

But Sherwood noted that neither Y.R.N. nor Yung Rich Nation ever achieved near the popularity of Migos' later work, which offered "scant opportunity to revive the stale 'YNR' mark."

It was an "incontrovertible fact," he said, that the company never had any right to the Migos name, and by the time Migos had paired up with Bravado, any need for the contract's restrictions was gone.

"There simply was no market left to cannibalize," Sherwood wrote in an 11-page opinion dated Sept. 12.

"The market for apparel bearing the name of a faded Migos song or album was gone and the restrictive covenants in [the contract] no longer made commercial success," he said.

The ruling was posted to the case docket Sept. 16.

Gary Adelman, who represents Migos, praised the ruling Thursday, saying his team was "very pleased that the court made the right decision."

An attorney for Cher and YRN LLC did not return a call Thursday afternoon seeking comment on the ruling.

Migos were represented by Adelman, Sarah Matz, David Marcus and Andrew Washburn of Adelman Matz in New York.

Cher and YRN LLC were represented by Steven Popofsky and Robert Tuchman of Kleinberg, Kaplan, Wolff & Cohen.

The case is captioned YRN v. Migos.

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