Netflix victorious in ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ domain name war

By now, everyone knows that Netflix has a hit on its hands with Demon Hunters KPop. The Netflix animated film has broken streaming records and won awards for the film itself and its chart-topping soundtrack.

Demon Hunters KPop are everywhere right away. Well, almost everywhere. If we were looking Demon Hunters KPop on the internet, many might be inclined to check out the URL KPopDemonHunters.com. However, Huntrix fans who go to this web address will find nothing there.

Indeed, until now, Netflix did not even own the domain name KPopDemonHunters.com. In fact, it was originally recorded three full days after the film’s release, on June 20, 2025, by an individual in Germany. Did Netflix really have no idea how big this movie would become?

How Netflix got the Demon Hunters KPop domain

Netflix recently won the KPopDemonHunters.com domain name of this individual in Germany named Sanchit Sood after filing a trademark dispute, as first reported by the domain media outlet. Domain Name Feed.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, better known as ICANN, is the organization that manages the global domain name space. Under ICANN rules, individuals and businesses can file domain name disputes under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).

When a UDRP complaint is filed, the complainant must prove that the domain name is confusingly similar to its trademark, that there is no legitimate interest on the part of the registrant, and that the registration was made in bad faith. The declarant can then present his case before an arbitration committee, which makes the final decision.

Brand owners don’t always win these cases. There are legitimate reasons why a registrant may own a domain name, such as if the brand is sufficiently generic. Even in this case where KPop Demon Hunters is extremely specific, a registrant could have purchased the domain name for other fair use cases, such as a fan site or to review the film (panels can still rule in favor of the trademark registrant even in these cases).

However, in this specific case, the registrant did not even respond to the UDRP dispute, leaving the sole panelist on the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) panel for this case with only Netflix’s argument. With all of these considerations taken into account, including the fact that the domain name didn’t even redirect to a website, this seemed like a clear case of cybersquatting a branded domain name. The panelist spoke in favor of Netflix, and the registrar where KPopDemonHunters.com was registered has or will transfer the domain to Netflix.

And with that, the trademark dispute over KPopDemonHunters.com is over, over, over.