this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2026
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They trademarked "Demon Hunters" in 2022....
Their case is shit, its frankly a miracle they were even able to trademark "Demon Hunters" because it's so generic. I see this going nowhere.
They got the trademark as soon as they started marketing their band. They may not have registered the trademark until 2022. Things like trademarks and copyright are implicit to the creator. Registering them just makes it easier for others to find your work and deter infringement and makes filing some paperwork, namely lawsuits, much easier.
This seems to be a bit mixed in reporting.
Seems like it depends on what the outlet wants to spin.
One article cited the trademark for recorded music and merchandise in 2022, but vaguely said there was a separate trademark for performance, but that was left unspecified. That article seemed to want to induce a narrative of opportunistic trademark, but even then that's perhaps a bit of a stretch as they wouldn't have known it would have gone down as a media sensation that soon, though it had been announced as a thing.
However, another article explained that the performance trademark was registered in 2014. That is pretty unambiguously way before Netflix would have even had it as a thought.
How many band names would not be considered generic independent of context? The Cure is trademarked, R.E.M. is trademarked, Queen is trademarked... Famously Apple computers ran up against Apple records trademark and it was deemed both ok for Apple Computer to continue without declaring it genericized, just that they were trademark in their respective markets. Until iTunes, then Apple had to change the arrangement.
Yet Apple has Apple. Trademarks are about markets. You can make a purse called Apple but you cant make computer hardware or software called apple without at least a C&D from Apple. Demon Hunters is so less generic than Apple and they probably only have it in music and maybe visual arts because of music videos.
Ironically, Apple got the shit sued out of them for the name by the Beatles because it infringed on the name of their record label.
Yes, and it's an excellent example that Apple the record label trademark was valid yet Apple the computer company could use it in a separate context, but had to change when they did iTunes.
Here it's squarely in the same market. The cited example of customer confusion about a concert event works strongly in their favor.
It does work in their favor, even I personally disagree with the concept that you can trademark existing common terms in a restrictive way. It's been going on for over half a century, so that fight has been lost.
my dude, Coke is generic. in the steel industry. there are hundreds if not thousands of coke companies. In the food industry? If there are more than one Coke company, they are subsidiaries of the Coca Cola Company.
Trademark law is all about how much the target market overlaps. Since they are a band and the movie is about a fictional band, they might have something
Demon hunters is not generic. It doesn’t work the way you think. I hold a few trademarks.
"What do you do for a living?"
"I hunt demons."
"So, you're a demon hunter?"
"No. Don't be ridiculous. Demon Hunter is trademarked by a band no one has ever heard of. We call ourselves 'Demon Stalkers' to avoid an infringement lawsuit."
Far easier than you'd think. The patent office is understaffed and the rules for this kind of thing are fairly loose.