One Direction Being Sued By… One Direction?

One Direction, the British boy band is being sued by an American band who is also named One Direction. How crazy is that?! Both groups have five members; the American group claims that they formed back in 2009 and have been called One Direction ever since. They are demanding a court order to force all five members of the British One Direction to change the name of their band because they had it first!

TMZ first reported this last night but I thought it must be some sort of joke, now as many other reports are being released, this is in fact true!

The US band is demanding THREE times the profits made by the UK band. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Simon Cowell‘s record label Syco Entertainment & Sony Music have been served with a $1 million dollar lawsuit.

The American One Direction is not signed to a label – however their album The Light has been on iTunes since 2011.

They also took to their blog to write about the suing stating, “To protect our rights, we reluctantly have filed a lawsuit. Despite our best efforts, we were unable to negotiate a reasonable compromise with the handlers for the band. They chose not to use a different name. They chose to press ahead, using the exact same name, One Direction, setting up the current difficulties and confusion in the United States.”

They went on to say, “The British boy band is well funded and high profile. They have Mr Cowell’s enormous resources behind them. We on the other hand do not.”

“In our view, we were here first. We have rights. We have talent, and we have heart. We are standing up for all of the above. Not having money does not take away your rights or make you ’less than’.”

As of now UK One Direction have not commented on the suit.

Check out a video of US One Direction singing below to see what they’re all about. Who do you think is better?

What do you think about US One Direction suing UK One Direction? Would you care if they have to end up changing their band name or will you think the same of them? Let me know in the comments!