Vice is a Canadian-American media giant reportedly valued at $2.5 billion with a portfolio that boasts a network of websites, a news outlet, a record label, film production studio, and most recently, a television channel.

ViceVersa are an unsigned indie band from LA, whose relatively meagre portfolio includes just over 1,000 Facebook likes and members who are struggling to pay rent, though they’ve recently begun to gain some traction.

However, the members of the band are currently too busy to bother enjoying the success of having their latest release, Da EP Vol 2, voted the #1 EP in LA Record Magazine’s Best of 2015 Reader & Contributor Poll.

That’s because Vice, the billion-dollar media empire, recently sent a cease-and-desist to ViceVersa, the indie band struggling to make ends meet. According to the former, the band is a threat to their well-known trademark.

As The Huffington Post reports, Vice Media issued ViceVersa with a cease-and-desists on the grounds that the band’s name and logo are “confusingly similar” to Vice Media’s and are “infringing on the exclusive rights held by Vice Media”.

Vice Media want the band to cease use of the name they’ve had since they began nearly four years ago, in addition to scrubbing their online channels and providing Vice with any documentation relating to their revenues, which are no doubt astronomical.

If ViceVersa don’t heed to Vice’s request, they face being hit with “claims for injunctive relief and monetary damages”. Things get more ridiculous once you grasp just what precipitated the letter in the first place.

According to HuffPo, a month ago, ViceVersa guitarist Christopher Morales received provisional approval from the US Patent and Trademark Office to trademark his band’s name. And this is what’s ruffled Vice’s feathers.

Vice, or at least their lawyers, argue the trademark application constitutes “unauthorized use of Vice Media’s intellectual property”, i.e. the word ‘vice’, and is “clearly for Mr. Morales’ commercial profit and gain, to the great detriment of Vice Media”.

[include_post id=”447522″]

As it stands, the band are refusing to take this one lying down and have launched a GoFundMe to help them fight the cease-and-desist. They argue that changing their name and removing their online channels would gravely harm their growing fan base and set them back thousands of dollars.

A lawyer for the band did offer to change some of the language in Morales’ trademark application, but told HuffPo he never received a reply from Vice. Instead, in March the company filed a letter of opposition to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.

Speaking to HuffPo, a Vice rep said ViceVersa’s trademark “overlaps with the scope of our already existing federal trademark. This is a standard, cut-and-dry trademark matter and we are not involved in litigation with this band”.

As the band attempt to raise funds to fight Vice’s order, which could potentially cost thousands, fans of the band and even Vice readers are taking to social media to lambast the media monolith, insisting their actions are out of order.