One Direction Faced With Lawsuit Over Band Name

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One Direction is slowly beginning to take over the pop music scene but the British boy band has hit a bump in the road that may cause it to change its name.


According to The Hollywood Reporter
, the band's record label, Syco Entertainment (owned by The X Factor's Simon Cowell) and Sony Music have been sued for $1 million by a U.S. band by the same name that claims that "One Direction (U.K.) can't navigate itself into U.S. jurisdiction without causing consumer confusion and destroying the goodwill of the U.S.-based doppelganger."


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Such "consumer confusion" was exemplified when NBC's Today mistakenly played U.S. One Direction's song when the U.K. band was being introduced to the show. The U.S. One Direction is not signed to a record label but has been selling its music since February 2011, which precedes U.K. One Direction's sale of its debut album by a few months.

U.S. One Direction's attorney, Peter Ross, claims that U.K. One Direction's record label was made aware that U.S. One Direction existed when it attempted to file for a trademark in the U.S. "Rather than change their name or do anything to...avoid damage to our goodwill, they chose to press ahead and come on their tour," Ross said.


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The attorney added that there have been ongoing negotiations in this matter for a month but he and U.S. One Direction didn't see the negotiations as being productive and resorted to filing a lawsuit.

U.K. One Direction has garnered increasing fame in the U.S. and elsewhere around the globe but may have to continue its music career under a different name depending on the outcome of the case.