The British pop group Easy Life have been forced to change their name after easyGroup, the owner of the easyJet brand, filed a lawsuit claiming their name infringed on a trademark.
The band will not defend the high court lawsuit, saying the financial burden of doing so would be too high. They have not announced a new name.
“We have realised that there are no good options available to us, and we need to change our name to move forward,” they wrote in a statement.
“We simply don’t have the funds to access a fair trial in the high court. Not to mention the fact that this would likely rattle on through to 2025, and with this hanging over us we wouldn’t be able to release any music in the meantime. Our careers, and indeed our lives, would be on hold.”
They added: “Should we lose [the case], the costs will be recouped from us personally. They could take everything; material possessions, our livelihoods, our homes.” Two concerts have been announced in Leicester and London later this week, as the last gigs under the Easy Life name.
Easy Life formed in 2015, and released their debut single in 2017. Both of their studio albums have reached No 2 in the UK charts, while their mixtape Junk Food reached No 7.
EasyGroup’s lawsuit against them attracted condemnation from MPs including Harriet Harman – in whose constituency the band live – Tom Watson and Kevin Brennan, who wrote on X: “How about supporting young artists rather than crushing them with corporate greed?”
The Guardian has contacted easyGroup for comment on the band’s decision.
EasyGroup owns the brand name Easylife, used by an online retail company that otherwise operates independently. EasyGroup characterised the Leicester-formed band as a “brand thief” for using the name, despite them forming seven years before easyGroup acquired the name Easylife, and without any prior objection from the original company.
EasyGroup filed the lawsuit last week, arguing the band had infringed on their trademark with their band name, via merchandise that imitated the easyGroup logo, and a tour poster with a plane with livery that resembled easyJet’s.
The company also claimed that the band had damaged easyGroup’s reputation by using profanity on stage and in their merchandise, and cited a newspaper report which claimed frontman Murray Matravers had been drunk during a performance.
In a statement the company said the band were engaged in “the deliberate misleading of the consumer to think that they are part of the easy family in order to increase their own sales … Mr Matravers has intentionally used easyGroup’s well known stylisation and images of easyJet planes in his marketing”. EasyGroup had said they were seeking “substantial” financial damages.
EasyGroup often launches legal actions of this kind, with a section of its website that documents its efforts to protect its brand from what it regards as “thieves”. These include, in 2018, an attempt to block Netflix from titling one of its series Easy.
EasyGroup acquired the brand name Easylife in July 2022, from a company who had been trading since 1992 with a catalogue retail business that later also moved online. EasyGroup have stated Easylife now pay them annual royalties for use of the Easylife brand name.
The previous year easyGroup had taken Easylife to court, arguing that the company infringed on their own trademark. A judge ruled against easyGroup in July 2021, saying: “In my judgment the word ‘easy’ is not distinctive. It is a descriptive word … a substantial number of the public will not be induced to buy goods from Easylife by mistaking the insignia of easyGroup.” The judge also ordered two brand names from the sprawling easyGroup family, easyLand and easy4men, to be revoked for non-use.
The ruling shows it is not easy for easyGroup to secure judgments in these cases; Easy Life could arguably have used the 2021 case as a precedent to show the phrase “Easy Life” was not distinctive enough for easyGroup to lay exclusive claim to. EasyGroup have instead prevailed before the case went to trial, but have arguably damaged their brand in doing so, by appearing to be what Easy Life characterised as a “Goliath” figure.
“It’s relatively rare nowadays to be as publicly aggressive as these guys are,” said William Miles, partner at London-based intellectual property law firm Briffa. “It’s pretty surprising they would refer to the band as a ‘brand thief’. Brands nowadays still enforce their rights, but might do so in a more considered way that won’t lead to adverse publicity. Maybe easyGroup would rather have a reputation for enforcing its mark aggressively – it’s quite a good reputation to have because it deters people. But it is at odds with how other brands approach this.”
Miles points out that there are numerous other companies with the registered trademark “Easy Life” and suggests the band might have argued “these are two fairly banal words”. But he says the band’s use of easyJet livery in their tour poster would have damaged their case. “Stuff like that would start to make a judge think ‘yes, this band is relying on the existing reputation of easyGroup’ … they start to lose some of the moral argument.”
He adds that the case is a cautionary tale for young bands starting out. “It’s worth thinking about what your name is going to be, whether it’s registerable – is it too generic, or too descriptive? – and if it is too similar to something that’s already registered. You want to know it’s a name you can lawfully own, because changing your name after you’ve had years of success is an incredibly painful thing to do.”
• This article was amended on 11 October 2023. An earlier version described easyGroup as “the parent company of easyJet”. This is not the case, though easyGroup is the owner of the airline’s brand name.
