FKA Twigs has asked a New York court to back her in a trademark dispute and confirm she is not infringing any trademarks associated with indie pop duo The Twigs. They seem to think that she is and that’s hindering her efforts to register the FKA Twigs name with the US Trademark Office.
It’s not the first time the two rival Twigses have had a dispute over their respective names, though the indie pop duo went quiet for a whole decade after a previous legal skirmish in 2014. The fact they raised no formal complaints during that decade of silence, while FKA Twigs - real name Tahliah Barnett - truly established her career as a musician, model and actor, is key to the new legal filing.
During that decade, the filing states, “Barnett invested extraordinary time, effort and resources building a successful career and brand under the FKA Twigs name”. That work “bore fruit”, adds the filing, and as a result “Barnett became widely regarded as one of the most innovative artists of her generation, building a career defined by artistic ambition, critical acclaim and an unwavering work ethic”.
During all that time, “there is not a shred of credible evidence of actual confusion” between FKA Twigs and The Twigs - something that “is unsurprising”, the court filing adds, because, in fact, the two sets of musical Twigses “operate in entirely different commercial ecosystems”.
The Twigs are “an alternative indie pop duo with limited recognition and minimal (if any) recent activity”, while FKA Twigs is “a globally recognised music artist whose creative work spans music, film, modelling and art, with a distinct aesthetic, audience and sound profile”.
To hammer home just how much the two artists operate in different worlds, the court filing also lists their respective social media and streaming stats. Because, despite everyone saying that vanity numbers don’t matter, sometimes vanity numbers matter quite a lot.
FKA Twigs has “880,000 subscribers and more than 325 million views on YouTube, 2.6 million followers on Instagram, and 3.2 million monthly listeners on Spotify”. The Twigs, by contrast, have “67 subscribers and 19,332 views on YouTube, 705 followers on Instagram, and 25 monthly listeners on Spotify”. Yeah, I think we get the message.
Barnett added ‘FKA’ to her original performer name ‘Twigs’ early on in her career to avoid confusion with The Twigs, which is a name sisters Laura and Linda Good have been performing under since the 1990s.
Since then Barnett, formerly known as Twigs, has been known as FKA Twigs. Though the ‘FKA’ definitely does not - according to Barnett - stand for ‘Formerly Known As’. Which is all very clever and post-modern and only moderately confusing unless, perhaps, you are The Twigs, or fans of The Twigs, in which case it might be very confusing.
Certainly Barnett adding the ‘FKA’ to her name did not stop the Goods from filing a lawsuit in 2014 seeking to stop Barnett performing in LA as FKA Twigs. That didn’t work though. The court refused to issue a temporary restraining order before a planned FKA Twigs gig took place and the sisters subsequently dropped their litigation.
That’s when the decade of silence began, until May 2024, when Barnett received a cease and desist letter from the Goods accusing her of trademark infringement. If Barnett didn’t stop using her performer name, the letter said, the Goods would “initiate legal proceedings against Ms Barnett to obtain both damages and injunctive relief”.
The previous year, Barnett had begun the process of registering FKA Twigs as a trademark in the US, which possibly prompted the Goods to send their letter - although they didn’t actually mention Barnett’s trademark application until they sent another cease and desist a year later.
By this point there was a back and forth of emails between the competing musical Twigses, in which the Goods at one point allegedly demanded a “seven-figure” settlement for “the status quo of co-existence”, before the sisters formally filed an opposition to Barnett’s trademark application in December last year.
Which means, since spouting up again in 2024, the Goods have not only “threatened to seek an injunction preventing Barnett from using her stage name”, but also “demanded a significant seven-figure payout to release any alleged claims”, and “are seeking an order from the Trademark Trial And Appeal Board preventing Barnett from registering her FKA Twigs mark”. Take your 325 million YouTube views and stick it.
The fact The Twigs continued to co-exist with FKA Twigs for a whole decade without any known issues means, say Barnett’s lawyers, the new legal claims are bogus.
Plus there are some slightly inconvenient legal principles that say the Goods can’t make a trademark claim now after sitting quietly for ten years (‘the doctrine of laches’), while also accepting the co-existence of the two names all that time (‘the doctrine of acquiescence’).
All of that, concludes the legal filing, means “Barnett is entitled to a judicial declaration that she has not infringed defendants’ alleged trademarks; that any purported claims by defendants are equitably barred; that Barnett is entitled to have her pending trademark applications mature to registration”.