Amid controversy over a participating crew in Mnet’s “Street Man Fighter” being introduced as BIIB (read the same as BTOB), Mnet and Cube announced their position.
On July 8th, BTOB‘s agency Cube Entertainment expressed its disappointment, saying, “We recognized that the name of a crew participating in the Mnet broadcast ‘Street Man Fighter’ as well as the logo and slogan of that crew are similar to ours.”
In the previously released “Street Man Fighter” crew preview video, the names of the participating crews were released. Among them, the “Bank2Brothers” crew introduced themselves using the abbreviation BIIB (read the same as BTOB) and the problem arose. Their logo and Idol group BTOB logo notation are also similar.
In this regard, Cube said, “We have informed Mnet that BTOB’s logo and name’s trademark could lead to infringement of rights, and strongly requested an apology for the related content,” adding, “We received an answer from the production team that they would not only use the crew’s full name from now on, but will also change the aforementioned logo and slogan.“
In response, Mnet explained on its official SNS that “BIIB is an abbreviation that Bank2Brothers Crew was already using.“
At the same time, it added, “We have decided to use only the crew’s full name in order to reduce confusion in broadcasting in the future and make it easier to understand by recognizing the parts that can cause confusion.” However, even though they recognized the similarity, some expressed regret in this explanation because there was no apology.
“Street Man Fighter” will premiere in August.
Source: daum
