A federal judge has temporarily blocked the political news website NOTUS from rebranding as The Star, following a trademark dispute with The Washington Star. The ruling came on Tuesday from U.S. District Judge Rossie D. Alston Jr., who issued a temporary restraining order preventing NOTUS from adopting the name to avoid public confusion as the legal case proceeds.

The dispute centers on two news organizations seeking to establish a presence in the Washington, D.C., media market amid significant cutbacks at The Washington Post, which has laid off more than 300 journalists and reduced its coverage this year. NOTUS, a nonprofit political news site launched in 2023 by Robert Allbritton, co-founder of Politico, had planned to change its name to The Star in early June as part of an expansion into local news and sports coverage.

The competing claimant is The Washington Star, a revived conservative-leaning publication originally founded decades ago but now operated under new ownership. Dovid Efune, publisher of The New York Sun, acquired the trademark for The Washington Star in 2024 and recently began publishing under that name on Substack. He has announced plans to develop a dedicated website and assemble a team of journalists to support the venture.

Efune filed the trademark infringement lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, contending that the overlapping use of “Star” by NOTUS had already caused confusion among readers. Lawyers representing NOTUS argued that the term “Star” has been long used by hundreds of media outlets and should not be exclusively claimed.

Judge Alston noted that both outlets aim to serve the same geographic market with comparable content, heightening the risk of public confusion. Consequently, the court barred NOTUS from rebranding as The Star, The Washington Star, or any similar variation, and from launching the associated new domain name. However, the ruling did not require the removal of any existing online references by NOTUS.

The case remains unresolved, with a follow-up hearing scheduled for July 22. Efune released a statement asserting that the ruling supports his organization’s mission to restore an important American media voice in the nation’s capital. NOTUS declined to comment on the ruling.