Christian metal band Demon Hunter have sued Netflix and AEG Presents over the “KPop Demon Hunters” trademark.
Demon Hunter have taken Netflix to court over the name of its animated hit. The Christian metal band’s corporation, Hyde Lane Inc., filed suit on Tuesday 18 August in the US District Court for the Central District of California against Netflix, Netflix Studios and concert promoter AEG Presents, alleging trademark infringement, false designation of origin and unfair competition (according to Complex). The case is docketed as Hyde Lane, Inc. v. Netflix, Inc., number 26-cv-9191, with the firm One LLP acting for the band. None of the allegations has been tested in court, and neither Netflix nor AEG had commented publicly at the time of writing.
The filing opens by setting out the band’s history and accusing the defendants of applying one standard to their own intellectual property and another to everyone else’s.
They wrote in the complaint: “Demon Hunter [is] a well- known and celebrated metal band. Demon Hunter was formed at the turn of the century and, in the quarter-century since, it has consistently released albums, toured, and sold merchandise to a large and dedicated audience. Unfortunately, in 2025, Netflix and Netflix Studios — despite almost certainly being aware of Demon Hunter — chose to release a movie titled ‘KPop Demon Hunters‘ … [which] reached unprecedented levels of success, not only as a film on Netflix‘s streaming service, but also via the ‘KPop Demon Hunters‘ movie soundtrack album and merchandise.”
Elsewhere the complaint describes the defendants as “massive companies that jealously guard and enforce their own intellectual property rights willfully disregarding the rights of others in pursuit of profits.”
The heart of the claim is the move into live music. Netflix announced in May that it was partnering with AEG on a global “KPop Demon Hunters” concert tour, mapped across 150 cities from 2027, and filed a run of trademark applications for tour merchandise.
“In short, in just a year’s time, Defendants have taken step after step to move into almost complete overlap with the goods and services offered by Hyde Lane under the Demon Hunter mark. As a result of their adoption and exploitation of the ‘KPop Demon Hunters‘ brand, which is confusingly similar to senior user Hyde Lane‘s established Demon Hunter mark, junior users Netflix, Netflix Studios, and AEG have created a substantial likelihood of confusion (and, indeed, actual confusion has already resulted),leading consumers to believe the parties’ goods or services are affiliated, sponsored, or otherwise connected with one another.”
On the imbalance in scale, the complaint continues: “Even more devastatingly, by leveraging their superior resources and reach, Defendants can, and do, eclipse Hyde Lane‘s Demon Hunter marks in the marketplace and effectively misappropriate the marks’ source-identifying significance. Thus, Defendants’ greater size and strength overwhelms Hyde Lane‘s established identity, causing consumers to perceive Hyde Lane as affiliated with, sponsored by, or derived from Defendants and denuding Hyde Lane of power over its commercial fate.”
The band position themselves as the senior user, having “established the mark first and invested in the goodwill associated with it for decades,” and say they have been “forced to surrender control over its commercial identity simply because Defendants have greater resources and a larger marketplace footprint.”
“The brand that Hyde Lane has carefully built over the course of the past quarter century now faces an existential crisis, thereby necessitating the filing of this action and the granting of the requested relief from this Court,” the complaint concludes.
The filing sets out several incidents it presents as evidence of confusion already happening.
One concerns a ticket buyer who spent $500 on seats for a Demon Hunter show in Albany, New York for a family outing, having understood it to be a “KPop Demon Hunters” event, then sought a refund. Another involves the programme Inside Edition approaching Demon Hunter‘s management to request an interview with Yu-Han Lee, a songwriter on the Netflix film who has no connection to the band and who won an Academy Award on 15 March.
The complaint also points to search results, stating that entering the band’s name on Ticketmaster returns “KPop Demon Hunters” events, with Google producing comparable results, and notes K-pop fans using the #demonhunter hashtag.
According to the complaint, Hyde Lane has used the name continuously since at least 2001 across recordings, song licensing, print and clothing, and registered marks with the US Patent and Trademark Office in 2022.
There is a complication the band address directly. The USPTO cancelled the mark in February 2025 after what the filing describes as an inadvertent failure to file the required Section 8 and 9 declaration on time. The complaint says Hyde Lane refiled that December. Netflix released the film on its platform in June 2025, between those two dates.
The filing also acknowledges that “KPop” is a generic term for a genre of music that began in South Korea, while arguing that because the film is a musical, music consumers stand to be confused.
On the band’s reach, the complaint cites more than 363,000 Spotify followers and 348,000 monthly listeners, with their seven most-played songs passing 100 million streams between them.
Hyde Lane has requested a jury trial. It is seeking a permanent injunction barring Netflix from using the “KPop Demon Hunters” name for recorded music, live performance and merchandise, restoration of what it calls its rightful interests in the mark, damages including treble damages and restitution, and disgorgement of the defendants’ profits.
“KPop Demon Hunters“, directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, follows the fictional group Huntr/x, Rumi, Mira and Zoey, who work as demon hunters behind their pop careers. It landed on Netflix in late June 2025 and became the platform’s most-watched English-language film. The soundtrack drew five Grammy nominations, and “Golden” won Best Original Song at the 98th Academy Awards.
Demon Hunter formed in 2000 and released their debut two years later, going on to twelve studio albums. Their chart record takes in two number one Independent Albums and six top five Hard Rock Albums.
The most recent, There Was A Light Here, came out last September on the band’s own Weapons MFG label, produced by frontman Ryan Clark with guitarist Jeremiah Scott, and mixed and mastered by Chris “Zeuss” Harris apart from the title track, which Eric Stenman mixed. The band announced a 20th anniversary tour for Storm The Gates Of Hell in July, with Wolves At The Gate and Bloodlines supporting.
