A rock band says it spent years building up its name, only for it to be effectively stolen by Netflix for the massively successful musical movie.
Netflix is facing a lawsuit over KPop Demon Hunters from a Christian metal band that’s used the name Demon Hunter for decades.
In a case filed Tuesday (Aug. 18) in Los Angeles federal court, the metal band said the streamer’s wildly successful animated musical — which spawned a chart-topping soundtrack featuring the massive hit “Golden” — has drowned out any recognition of their longtime name.
“This lawsuit is a classic case of massive companies that jealously guard and enforce their own intellectual property rights willfully disregarding the rights of others in pursuit of profits,” the band’s lawyers write in court filings obtained by Billboard.
Kpop Demon Hunters, released in June 2025, was a pop culture phenomenon. It quickly became the most-watch Netflix original film of all time, earning more than 500 million views by early 2026, and later won Oscars for best animated feature film and best original song.
The music has been its own success story. The soundtrack spent two weeks atop the Billboard 200, while “Golden” spent eight at the top of the Hot 100. Three more tracks — “Your Idol”, “Soda Pop” and “How It’s Done” — reached the top 10, making Kpop Demon Hunters the first film since 1995 to have at least three songs in the top 10.
Over a 25-year career, Demon Hunter has had its own fair share of success. The band’s 2014 album Extremist reached No. 16 on the Billboard 200, and they have placed eight different records within the top three of the Top Christian Albums chart.
In Tuesday’s lawsuit, the band says that any awareness of that career has been effectively overwhelmed by Netflix’s choice of such a similar name for Kpop Demon Hunters. The band says the movie has “devastated” a brand that it has “spent decades establishing.”
“Despite having established the mark first and invested in the goodwill associated with it for decades, Hyde Lane — the senior user — has effectively been forced to surrender control over its commercial identity simply because Defendants have greater resources and a larger marketplace footprint,” Demon Hunter’s lawyers write.
Such accusations are known in trademark law as “reverse confusion.” Where most trademark cases claim a little-known company is trying to free-ride on a famous brand — think a fake Nike swoosh or lookalike packaging for cereal — reverse confusion cases claim that a big company has effectively flooded the market with a new brand that crowds out a little guy.
“Defendants are massive corporations with millions of dollars to pour into their own brand development … from marks that they simply seized from plaintiff, and thus, consumers are likely to mistakenly believe that defendants are actually the senior user,” the band’s lawyers write.
Demon Hunter could face a difficult time in court. Trademark lawsuits over creative works like movies and music are hard to win, because courts typically rule that the First Amendment gives authors wide leeway.
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