FKA Twigs Countersued by The Twigs Over Trademark Fight as Legal Battle Escalates

FKA Twigs is now facing a countersuit from the indie duo The Twigs, who say the artist has used her fame and money to try to “destroy” their trademark.

The long-running dispute traces back more than a decade. Earlier this year, singer, actor and dancer Tahliah Barnett filed suit against sisters Laura Good and Linda Good, asking a judge to confirm that her stage name does not infringe on the LA band’s name. But the tension between the two acts goes further back than that, with the pair already in court in 2014 after The Twigs sued Barnett over alleged trademark infringement tied to a name they say they had been using since 1996.

That first attempt did not go far. The band lost an initial request for an injunction and ultimately dropped the case. The matter resurfaced in 2024, though, when The Twigs sent Barnett a cease-and-desist letter after she applied for her own trademark, demanding that she stop using the name.

Barnett then responded with her own lawsuit, arguing that the band was trying to “weaponise” unsupported claims in order to extract money from her. According to Rolling Stone, court documents say she offered the duo $15,000 so the two musical entities could “co-exist,” but the offer was rejected. The sisters, the filing says, “declined and stressed that they did not consent to this proposed co-existence”.

In that same suit, Barnett’s side argued it was “inconceivable” that anyone would confuse the two acts. The filing pointed to the singer’s 3.2 million monthly Spotify listeners and more than 300 million YouTube views, while describing the band as having “simply disappeared” and noting their “705 followers on Instagram and 25 monthly listeners on Spotify”. It also claimed the two parties “operate in entirely different commercial ecosystems,” and accused The Twigs of threatening an injunction and demanding a seven-figure payout to drop their alleged claims.

Now, Laura Good and Linda Good have struck back. In papers filed on Monday May 11, the sisters argue that they did not lose their original 2014 case because Barnett was based in the UK at the time and was then concentrating more on acting and dancing than on music. They also say she had not registered trademarks around that period and helped avoid confusion by using the FKA prefix.

But, the countersuit claims, that changed as Barnett’s music career gained momentum. The sisters point to the release of Magdelene in 2019, her signing to Atlantic, her trademark application, and the arrival of the hit album EUSEXUA. Around that same period, they say, Barnett began gradually dropping “FKA” at live events and public appearances.

“Barnett intentionally used her celebrity and resulting power with the media to act in ways designed to increase the public’s association of Barnett and her musical services with ‘Twigs,’ while eroding and overwhelming counterclaim-plaintiffs’ goodwill … in those same musical channels of commerce.”

That is the central accusation in the countersuit, which says Barnett’s actions over the years were designed to “weaken, if not destroy” the band’s intellectual property rights. The sisters are seeking a legal injunction that would bar her from using the stage name, along with unspecified financial damages for trademark infringement and unfair competition, according to Billboard.

Neither Barnett nor her representatives have publicly responded to the countersuit as of writing. NME has reached out to a spokesperson for FKA Twigs for comment.

Barnett released EUSEXUA last year, and NME gave the album a glowing five-star review. Her track “Room Of Fools” also placed at Number 25 on our 50 best songs of 2025 list. Since then, she has shared the follow-up album EUSEXUA Afterglow, which NME rated four stars.