Goldenvoice, the company behind the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, has filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Ghanaian music festival Afrochella, Rolling Stone reports. G
oldenvoice filed the lawsuit at a California district court on Wednesday, after previously warning the organizers behind the fest. Per the suit, Coachella and the company claim that Afrochella is “intentionally trading on the goodwill of [Coachella and Goldenvoice’s] well-known COACHELLA and CHELLA festivals and trademarks by actively promoting music events in the United States and in Ghana using the confusingly similar mark ‘AFROCHELLA’ and by fraudulently attempting to register Plaintiffs’ actual trademarks as their own.”
As Goldenvoice cautioned in 2019, the organizers said that it did not want festival goers to believe that Afrochella is “authorized by, affiliated with, AEG or Coachella.” It has been alleged that the team behind Afrochella “admitted” that its name and event were “inspired by Coachella.” Goldenvoice accused the people behind the fest of sharing comments on its Facebook page that state its name “is merely trading on the goodwill of the Coachella mark.”
Afrochella, like Coachella, postponed its event plans in 2020 on account of the pandemic. However, the organizers ignored the warning and went ahead with the festival in Accra, Ghana in 2021.
The fest is currently scheduled to take place this year on December 28 and 29. There are plans for Afrochella to expand to South Africa later this month, too, and the organizers have expressed plans to host U.S.-based events in the future. Goldenvoice filed the lawsuit to protect its ownership of anything related to the “chella” name, and the court docs claim the organizers attempted to patent “Chella” and even “Coachella” in Ghana.
“Defendants even went so far as to apply in Ghana to register Coachella and Chella as their own trademarks, using the exact same stylization as Plaintiffs’ registered Coachella (stylized) mark,” the suit reads. Goldenvoice is seeking an immediate restraining order on the Afrochella name, and is seeking “damages for trademark and service mark infringement and unfair competition.” Additionally, the company wants $100,000 for alleged cybersquatting of various domain names.
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