On January 8, it was reported that the MBK Entertainment agency had applied for trademark registration for the T-ara name in the Intellectual Property Office of Korea on December 28. If the application is accepted, then the members of T-ara will not be able to promote with that name for at least 10 years. Even if they change their name, they will have to pay royalties to the agency if they sing any song they have released under the name T-ara.
Many have been saying that T-ara's situation is similar to that experienced by Highlight members when they left Cube Entertainment. The group could not use the BEAST name because the agency had registered it.
The agency stated: "We have applied for trademark registration for the name T-ara. We believe that we are justified in requesting this trademark registration as the former agency of the group. "
"To say that this will be a second BEAST situation is pure speculation. In that case, the agency had banned members of BEAST (now Highlight) from using the name BEAST after they had established their future plans and requested to use it. We had a beautiful farewell with T-ara. We said goodbye on good terms and the members have not yet decided their future plans. We do not believe that it is right for us to be criticized for our actions. "
That same day, "Section TV" of MBC and other media reported that T-ara had spoken with Wang Sicong, who according to his reports paid the agency 9 trillion won for the promotions of the members in China and had given them Luxury cars to each of the girls in the group. Banana Culture has handled the group's activities in China in the past.
In response to these reports, Qri, Eunjung, Hyomin and Jiyeon of T-ara, published an official statement through their personal Instagram accounts. The statement reads as follows:
"Hello. We are Qri, Eunjung, Hyomin and Jiyeon of T-ara. We do not have a company that acts on our behalf, so after contemplating and gathering courage, we decided to inform you here.
As for the articles that inform that the members received luxury cars and 9 trillion won, we personally contacted Wang Sicong (Banana Culture) through Weibo and received a formal response that these reports are false and totally unfounded.
We hope that the agency and all the employees who worked hard with us since our debut are not negatively affected by this unfounded rumor. The official position of the four members is that we can continue to greet them with the name of 'T-ara' and hope that all this can be resolved peacefully. Thank you for reading".
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