Dua Lipa filed a $15 million federal lawsuit against Samsung Electronics last Friday, accusing the South Korean tech giant of plastering her photograph on television boxes sold across the United States without her knowledge, consent, or compensation — and then refusing to stop when confronted.
The complaint, lodged by law firm Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP in the Central District of California, charges Samsung with copyright infringement, trademark infringement, and violation of Lipa’s right of publicity. At the center of the case is a backstage photograph taken at the 2024 Austin City Limits Music Festival, a copyrighted image that Lipa’s team says she owns outright. Samsung allegedly printed it prominently on the front of cardboard boxes housing its television sets, using her likeness to promote the Xite Hits channel on Samsung TV Plus.
Lipa says she had no idea her face was selling televisions until June 2025, when fans on social media began calling the product the “Dua Lipa TV Box.” The lawsuit quotes one customer who wrote that they had not planned to buy a TV until they spotted her image on the box — precisely the kind of implied endorsement her legal team argues Samsung was engineering.
The singer’s attorneys describe Samsung’s conduct as “dismissive and callous,” saying the company stonewalled repeated cease-and-desist demands and kept the infringing products on shelves. Samsung declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation.
The lawsuit leans heavily on Lipa’s meticulously curated commercial identity. Her endorsed partnerships span Porsche, Apple, Chanel, Tiffany & Co., Versace, Bvlgari, Nespresso, and the 2026 Winter Olympics — a portfolio of elite brands that her legal team argues reflects a deliberate strategy she would never dilute with an electronics deal she didn’t approve. “Consistent with this deliberate strategy, Plaintiff would not have agreed to license her name, image or likeness in connection with the sale of the Infringing Products,” the complaint states.
California, where the case is being heard, enforces publicity rights particularly strongly, which legal observers say gives Lipa a favorable venue. This is also not Samsung’s first brush with legal trouble around its TV business — the company was among five manufacturers sued in December by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over allegations of ad-targeting spyware embedded in its sets.
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Lipa, a three-time Grammy winner whose albums Future Nostalgia and Radical Optimism both cracked the Billboard 200 top three, has expanded her public profile in recent years with roles in Barbie and the upcoming A24 comedy Peaked. Samsung, a global electronics giant with revenue in the hundreds of billions, faces a plaintiff whose commercial brand may ultimately prove as valuable to the case as the legal statutes themselves.
