There are five of them, they’re young, cute and in a group, and they need industrial quantities of hair gel to get out of the house each day. They call themselves One Direction. And they are suing One Direction.

One Direction US are moodier, and want to be serious rock cousins of One Direction UK. They are suing their European doppelgangers for $1 million, saying that they had the name first and that the UK outfit should stop using it.

One Direction US, who sound like Blink 182, say they formed a year before One Direction UK surfaced, on the 2010 run of The X Factor. Although unsigned, without a hit to their name and with only a fraction of One Direction UK’s fan base, they say One Direction UK’s arrival in the US causes confusion and is destroying their goodwill.

One upside of that confusion seems to be that One Direction US are getting a lot more YouTube hits and iTunes sales.

Simon Cowell’s Syco record label, which One Direction UK are signed to, isn’t taking the lawsuit lying down; it is now countersuing One Direction US, saying that the Europeans “have had unprecedented success and fame in the US” and that the name One Direction is theirs alone.

A Twitter hashtag has been set up (#new1Dname) to suggest a new name for One Direction UK should One Direction US win their case.