Demon Hunter vs. KPop Demon Hunters: When the Hunter Becomes the Hunted

A Christian metal band called Demon Hunter is suing Netflix over KPop Demon Hunters, the animated film that became the most-watched original title in the company's history with over 600 million views. The band formed in Seattle in 2000, registered its trademark, and has released albums and toured under that name for twenty-five years. Netflix released its movie in 2025 and is now planning a 150-city world tour with AEG.

My first reaction was that this looks opportunistic for the band. My second reaction was that they might have a real claim. Both of those things can be true at once. So what does it tell us about intellectual property law?

The band's evidence of consumer confusion includes a man who allegedly spent $500 on tickets to a Demon Hunter show for his five and six-year-old daughters, believing he was buying tickets to see the fictional K-pop group. I found the original listing. Tickets ran $38 to $55, with VIP packages starting at $150, and the page used only the band's own imagery, which looks nothing like the animated show and would strike most parents as inappropriate for a small child. The more believable example is CBS's Inside Edition contacting the band to request an interview with the KPop Demon Hunters songwriter about winning an Oscar. That reads like a producer running a quick search, finding the wrong entity, and firing off an email without checking. Laziness rather than genuine confusion, though the distinction may not matter legally.

Trademark law already has a doctrine built for exactly this situation called reverse confusion.

The ordinary trademark case involves a small player trying to profit off a famous brand's goodwill, like a street vendor selling fake Rolexes. Reverse confusion is the inverse. A large junior user saturates the market with a mark similar to a smaller senior user's, and consumers start assuming the original is the imitator. The Federal Circuit put it plainly in a 1993 case: a newcomer "does not gain the right to register a substantially identical mark simply because the number of persons exposed to the registrant's mark may be small in relation to the newcomer's volume of use” (In re Shell Oil Co., 992 F.2d 1204).

Fame is not a defense. If anything, courts have held that a junior user's commercial strength can strengthen the senior user's claim rather than weaken it, because the more thoroughly the market gets saturated, the more completely the original gets buried.

That's the case Demon Hunter is making, and on the doctrine alone it's a legitimate one.

Netflix has a real defense too, and part of it comes from a case involving Batman.

In 2014, a software company called Fortres Grand sued Warner Brothers over The Dark Knight Rises. The film featured a fictional program called "Clean Slate" that erases criminal records. Fortres Grand sold real software by the same name. The Seventh Circuit dismissed the suit as implausible, reasoning that a fictional product inside a creative work doesn't compete in the same market as an actual product.

Netflix's stronger argument is probably simpler: that KPop Demon Hunters is distinct enough from Demon Hunter that consumers aren't actually confused. Different genre, different audience, different visual identity, different everything except two words. The complication is the world tour. Once Netflix starts selling concert tickets and merchandise under that name, the distance between the two entities narrows considerably. The band's complaint identifies that shift as the moment the two moved into what it calls "almost complete overlap."

Music isn't the only place this happens. Meta X, a small tech company, claimed prior rights to the "Meta" mark when Facebook rebranded. That dispute settled without any judicial determination of priority, which is its own kind of answer. When Lady Antebellum shortened its name to Lady A in 2020, it collided with a blues singer who had performed under that name for decades. The country group sued for declaratory judgment; the case eventually settled.

There's also the opposite problem, where a mark becomes so successful it stops working as a mark at all. Kleenex, Xerox, Escalator, Aspirin. Companies fight genericization aggressively because dominance in the public imagination can dissolve the distinctiveness a trademark depends on.

A few things about Demon Hunter's position complicate the sympathetic reading.

Trademark law operates on a use-it-or-lose-it principle, and the band's activity over the last decade has been intermittent. Limited releases, limited touring. You can argue they've maintained the mark sufficiently, and they'd probably win that argument, but "we've been consistently active for twenty-five years" is doing some work in the complaint that the actual record only partly supports.

At the same time, trademark holders have an affirmative obligation to defend their marks. Failing to enforce against infringement can weaken your position later. So the same lawsuit that looks opportunistic from one angle looks like basic legal hygiene from another. A band that watched its name become synonymous with something else and did nothing might find that inaction used against it in a future dispute.

There's an asymmetry underneath all of this that matters more than who wins.

Demon Hunter has a doctrine designed to protect them. What they don't necessarily have is the ability to use it. Trademark litigation against a company with Netflix's resources means years of discovery, expert witnesses, and legal fees that can exceed what a mid-tier band earns in a decade. The reverse confusion doctrine exists on paper for small senior users, but exercising it requires resources that most small senior users don't have.

I spent eight years litigating a trademark case. I had pro bono counsel, an eventual Supreme Court hearing, and significant public attention, and it still nearly broke the band. Most people in a similar position settle, walk away, or never file at all. The doctrine doesn't fail because courts get it wrong. It fails because the cost of invoking it filters out almost everyone it was written to help.

Whatever reform looks like here, it probably has less to do with changing the substantive standard than with making enforcement accessible. Fee-shifting provisions that actually function. Expedited procedures for clear-cut reverse confusion cases. Something that closes the gap between having a right and being able to exercise it.

Trademark law is supposed to protect the public from confusion about who made what. That's the justification for the whole system: not a property grant to companies, but a consumer protection mechanism that happens to benefit mark holders as a byproduct.

I wrote about a version of this recently with the Bad Spaniels case, where a famous brand tried to suppress a parody. The pattern is consistent: when IP doctrine drifts toward serving whoever can afford to litigate rather than whoever the public interest actually requires protecting, it stops doing the job it was designed for.

Demon Hunter might win. Netflix might win. Either outcome will be shaped less by who has the better argument than by who can afford to keep making it.

Simon Tam is the founder of The Slants and the central figure in Matal v. Tam (2017), the unanimous Supreme Court decision that struck down the government's power to deny trademarks on disparagement grounds. He speaks on First Amendment and intellectual property issues nationally. For information on bringing him to speak, visit simontam.org/speaking.