Grammy Award-winning hip-hop act Arrested Development has hit Fox, Imagine Films Entertainment, and New World Communications of Atlanta, Inc., with a trademark infringement lawsuit. Group founders Todd "Speech" Thomas and Timothy "Headliner" Barnwell filed suit on October 16th in DeKalb County Superior Court in Atlanta, Georgia.

The group believes Fox is infringing upon their trademark by naming the network's new show Arrested Development. The show, which debuted last Sunday, November 2nd, stars Jason Bateman.

Speech shared his thoughts on the lawsuit in a statement, "Fox has no more right to use 'Arrested Development' for its show than a band would have to name itself after one of Fox's sitcoms."

Fox spokesperson Steven Melnick disagreed. Melnick told the Atlanta Journal Constitution, "The title is derived from a commonplace expression as well as an established psychological condition that reflect the central theme of the series and is wholly different from and has nothing whatsoever to do with the musicians using the same name. As such, we are defending our First Amendment rights to the usage of the title."

The group's attorney, Charlie Henn, agrees that the phrase was around before the group but Henn offered a different analysis. Henn said, "Think of Apple. The word apple has been in existence for forever to refer to a specific piece of fruit. But at one point the guys from the computer company came along and said, 'Oh, we're going to call our company Apple,' at that point you have protectable trademark rights, even when it has some generic meaning for something else."

In related news, Arrested Development, which broke up in 1996, has re-united and is currently working on a new album, Among The Trees, which will be released in 2004. The group released its critically-acclaimed debut, 3 Years, 5 Months, and 2 Days in The Life Of...in 1992.