NOTUS Cannot Be ‘The Star’: Judge Blocks D.C. News Outlet’s Rebranding

In the other corner is The Washington Star, a revival of an old, conservative-leaning newspaper.

Dovid Efune, the publisher of The New York Sun, acquired the trademark for The Washington Star in 2024 and started publishing under the name on Substack last week, with plans for a custom website and hiring underway for a team of journalists.

At the same time, he sued NOTUS in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia for trademark infringement, arguing that readers had already started to confuse the two publications.

Lawyers for NOTUS said in court documents that hundreds of media organizations had used “Star” as a moniker for more than a century.

In addition to reader confusion, Judge Alston noted that both outlets targeted the same geographical area with similar coverage.

He ordered that NOTUS be temporarily barred from rebranding as The Star, The Washington Star or similar, and that it could not launch its new domain name. But he stopped short of requiring the publication to take down any current references used online. The next hearing in the case is set for July 22.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/02/business/media/notus-washington-star-trademark-dispute.html