Girl act T-ara unable to use own group name

The members of the renowned K-pop girl act T-ara will no longer be able to promote the group in any form related to the name "T-ara".

MBK Entertainment, which had represented T-ara until the members' departure at the end of December, is known to have applied to register the group's name "T-ara" as its trademark at the state Korean Intellectual Property Office on December 28.

This means that the four T-ara members will be banned from promoting the group under the original name without MBK's permission.

Accordingly, the T-ara members are seen facing the same hardships as the K-pop boy groups "Highlight" and "JYJ" that had to rebrand themselves after leaving their original labels.