The Trademark War Behind Disney’s Rebranding of FOX as NOW TV in Turkey

11/11/2025Entrepreneurship & Digital Marketing•3335 views•8 min read•by Kuray Karaaslan

On February 12, 2024, one of Turkey’s most prominent television broadcasters, FOX TV, reintroduced itself under a new name: NOW TV. The rebranding gala was lavish — celebrities, live music, red carpets, and high production visuals celebrated what appeared to be a new chapter in the channel’s evolution. Yet behind the branding spectacle, a complex trademark dispute had already begun brewing. Within weeks, it would expose the frictions between global media consolidation, local intellectual property law, and the silent logic of legacy brand management.

This is the story of how Disney’s global strategy collided with a small Turkish media company’s prior rights to a name — and the bureaucratic, financial, and legal ripple effects of a seemingly simple change in brand identity.

A Name That Carries Baggage

The Turkish FOX TV channel was originally launched in 2007, but its origins trace back to the broader acquisitions made by The Walt Disney Company in 2019. That year, Disney completed its $71.3 billion acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets, including global television channels, film studios, and content libraries.

Notably absent from this acquisition was Fox News Channel, which remained under the control of Rupert Murdoch’s newly restructured Fox Corporation. To avoid brand confusion, legal entanglements, and reputational risk — especially given Fox News’ alignment with American conservative politics — Disney agreed to a five-year window during which it could continue using the “Fox” name. After that, all “Fox”-branded entities under Disney’s control would need to rebrand.

That five-year clock ran out in 2024.

The Shift to NOW TV

In the United States, the former 20th Century Fox studio was renamed 20th Television, and other regional channels were renamed under brands like Star and FX. In Turkey, however, these options weren’t viable: “Star” was already taken by Star TV, and FX operated as a separate cable channel.

Enter “NOW TV” — a brand Disney had been rolling out in international markets. It’s sleek, modern, and unburdened by political connotations. By early 2024, the Turkish FOX channel prepared for a major identity shift to NOW TV. The marketing materials were ready, visuals rendered, artists booked, and a public campaign scheduled. But behind the scenes, there was a looming issue: someone else already owned the NOW name in Turkey.

The Trademark Trap

On April 12, 2022, a company named NAM Televizyon ve Reklamcılık A.Ş., based in Istanbul, filed a trademark application for “İstanbul NOW”, covering both radio/TV broadcast services and related educational and cultural services. The application, number 2022/052502, passed scrutiny, survived objections, and was officially registered as a trademark on February 1, 2024 — just eleven days before Disney’s rebranded gala.

Their scope covered the same Nice classification codes (38 and 41) — covering broadcasting, news, entertainment, and cultural services — almost identically overlapping with Disney’s own application for NOW TV.

And crucially, the visual trademark logo used in their filing resembled what Disney would later present as part of their rebranding.

While Disney filed its own Turkish trademark application for “NOW TV Medya Global” on January 24, 2024 under application number 2024/010546, it quickly ran into trouble. By March 2024, that application was withdrawn — either voluntarily or as part of a legal compromise — and officially listed as “Geri çekildi” (withdrawn/abandoned).

But Disney didn’t give up.

On January 30, 2025, they filed another application, this time under a simplified brand: NOW, with a sleek black logo, using their U.S. legal arm, Disney Enterprises, Inc., as the applicant.

This application (number 2025/012843) is still under review — but it has already drawn objections.

Layers of Bureaucracy and Cost

Branding transitions are never cheap, but when a legal reversal is involved, the costs explode. Disney’s Turkish rebrand included:

High-profile rebranding events and celebrity contracts
Production and rollout of new visual identities
Revisions across print, digital, and broadcast collateral
Legal filings for domain names, trademarks, and broadcast licenses

Once the earlier trademark conflict emerged, much of this had to be either legally justified or duplicated. Any previously submitted applications referencing “FOX” had to be resubmitted under “NOW.” Broadcast licenses, RTÜK documentation, contracts with advertising partners — all of these required bureaucratic revision.

Moreover, if courts eventually side with NAM Televizyon’s prior claim — as their registered and active trademark suggests — Disney may have to rebrand yet again, or pay for usage rights. That could involve millions in settlement fees, reputational risk, and yet another cycle of rebranding, legal wrangling, and asset production.

The Institutional Logic

At the heart of this dispute lies a broader tension: the way global media conglomerates like Disney approach intellectual property and local compliance.

Disney’s trademark and IP operations are notoriously disciplined, usually pre-empting such conflicts through exhaustive searches and early filings. The fact that Disney’s team missed — or dismissed — the 2022 application by Istanbul NOW TV suggests either a breakdown in diligence or a calculated risk, betting that their global muscle could override smaller players.

It is also possible that Disney was not formally notified or chose not to respond to any cease-and-desist communications prior to the rebranding event — a risky gamble in the Turkish legal context, where local IP protections are strictly enforced under the 6769 Industrial Property Code.

In contrast, NAM Televizyon appears to have followed every procedural step:

Filing in 2022, more than 18 months before Disney’s Turkish rebranding
Surviving trademark opposition hearings
Paying all fees and securing formal registration
Issuing legal steps as early as January 2025, including an “ihtiyati tedbir” — a provisional injunction — on the Disney file

This suggests the smaller Turkish company may be on stronger legal footing — especially given that Disney’s own initial trademark was withdrawn.

Human and Organizational Friction

In bureaucratic reality, these kinds of conflicts don’t just affect corporations. They ripple into the lives of administrative staff, legal departments, designers, channel schedulers, and engineers.

Imagine the engineers updating metadata across thousands of content files to reflect a new channel ID. Or the marketing coordinators scrambling to replace logos in hundreds of ad placements. Or the legal teams revisiting every clause in vendor contracts to ensure compliance with branding terms.

The real cost of a naming conflict like this is borne not just in courtrooms, but in the day-to-day friction of managing a large media operation in legal limbo.

Strategic Miscalculation or Deliberate Risk?

Why would Disney go forward with a rebrand knowing another party had a valid claim to the name?

One possibility is contractual pressure. The original acquisition deal between Disney and 21st Century Fox reportedly included a clause requiring that the “Fox” name be dropped after five years. By 2024, Disney had no legal right to continue using “Fox” in branding — and may have been forced to adopt “NOW” regardless of legal ambiguity.

Another is market dominance psychology. Disney may have bet that the size and global strength of its brand would allow it to negotiate or overpower the local claimant after the fact.

Finally, it could simply be a case of brand strategy inertia: Disney had already rolled out “NOW TV” as a brand in other markets. Standardizing it across geographies simplified marketing and programming logic.

But these strategies do not always translate cleanly into countries with strong, localized IP enforcement systems like Turkey’s.

Implications for Media Governance

This conflict is not just a corporate squabble — it reflects how global media governance, legal frameworks, and digital infrastructure collide in national contexts.

It highlights the risks of underestimating local IP regimes, and the broader consequences of attempting to impose a universal brand architecture on complex legal territories.

It also exposes how deeply intertwined media branding is with legal infrastructure, and how costly it can be to treat names as merely aesthetic choices rather than rights-bound assets.

Conclusion

What began as a sleek, celebratory rebrand of FOX TV to NOW TV in Turkey has turned into a slow-motion legal and administrative collision between a multinational entertainment empire and a small but procedurally prepared local broadcaster.

Whether Disney will ultimately be forced to pay licensing fees, rebrand again, or settle in court remains to be seen.

What is certain is this: in an era of global media consolidation, even something as seemingly simple as a name can become a high-stakes battleground where bureaucracy, branding, and law intersect — and where local filings can humble global giants.