There will only be one Star in this town.
The Washington publication NOTUS announced a splashy rebranding in April, telling its audience that it would be called The Star by June. Now the company is heading back to the drawing board.
On Thursday, NOTUS agreed to resolve a trademark lawsuit brought by The Washington Star, a rival publication, and will change its rebranding plans.
“We continue to work toward a new name,” a NOTUS spokeswoman said, adding that both parties had “amicably resolved the matter.”
Both parties will pay their own costs and legal fees, according to a court filing. Further details about the resolution were not disclosed. Dovid Efune, the owner of The Washington Star, declined to comment.
The Washington Star, a conservative-leaning newspaper that stopped printing in 1981, was restarted last month by Mr. Efune. It is publishing on Substack, and Mr. Efune previously said he planned to bring back a weekend print newspaper by the end of the year.
He restarted The Washington Star about a month after NOTUS, a political news website in Washington, announced plans to expand its coverage of local news and sports and change its name to The Star.
NOTUS, which is owned by Robert Allbritton, has a familial link to the Washington Star name — Mr. Allbritton’s father owned the newspaper for several years in the 1970s. The NOTUS moniker stands for News of the United States.
Mr. Efune sued NOTUS in May in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, arguing that readers would not be able to tell the difference between the two outlets with their similar names, location and reporting focus.
