Coachella promoter Goldenvoice is suing rival company Live Nation Entertainment for contributory trademark infringement related to a new festival called Coachella Day One 22, according to a new report by Billboard.
The suit was filed in a California federal court on Monday and names Live Nation and web hosting company Bluehost as defendants, claiming that they are “intentionally trading on the goodwill of” the Coachella name by promoting “a directly competitive live music event,” as well as mimicking the look of the original Coachella festival’s branding.
However, while Live Nation is being sued for selling tickets to the event on its Ticketmaster website and mobile app, they’re not directly responsible for the Coachella Day One 22 event. The Day One 22 festival was organized and promoted by the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians, a Native American tribe that is shielded from legal action due to sovereign immunity. In the suit, Goldenvoice claims that Live Nation ” has unfairly profited from” the festival’s alleged infringement, while Bluehost is named as a defendant for hosting the website coachellacrossroads.com.
Of course, in addition to the music festival, Coachella is the name of a place — specifically, the Coachella Valley in California, which is home to the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians — and Live Nation will likely try to argue in court that the festival is simply named after its locale. But adding “Day One 22” to the end seems like a pretty obvious ploy to trick consumers who are looking to buy tickets to the first day of next year’s Coachella festival, creating, as Goldenvoice puts it in the court documents, “a likelihood of consumer confusion and false association.”
As it stands, the original Coachella festival is currently slated to take place over two weekends in April 2022, while Coachella Day One 22 is scheduled to take place on Dec. 31.
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