A fundraising festival featuring Mr Motivator and John Shuttleworth has been forced to change its name after US festival Coachella objected to the title Couch-ella.
The MS Trust said they were forced to remove the “soft furnishings” from their name after the real Coachella – an annual festival in the California desert – raised the issue.
The event on August 22 will now be known as the MS Trust Home Festival and will feature livestreamed comedy, music and dance.
According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the organisers of the Coachella festival have held a trademark on the rights to the “chella” suffix since 2015.
Announcing the name change on Instagram, the charity said: “Our festival has a new name! The people running the real ‘Coachella’ in America won’t let us use ‘COUCH-ella’, so unfortunately we’ve had to change the name to ‘MS Trust Home Festival’.
“The event is still going ahead as planned on August 22, with all the same festival fun to be had, just without the soft furnishings!”
The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival takes place in the Indio desert near Palm Springs and attracted about 250,000 attendees last year.
Previous headliners have included Oasis, Radiohead, and The Cure while Beyonce’s performance at the 2018 festival was filmed and released as live album and film Homecoming.
