Pitchfork

You don't sue Radiohead. Even if we're only talking Phil Selway and Jonny Greenwood, you do not sue Radiohead! And you sure as hell don't sue Harry Potter. Such was the lesson learned by a few unfortunate folks in Canada recently.

In the fourth Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry, Ron, and Hermione attend a school dance where the tunes are supplied by a band called the Weird Sisters. As Goblet of Fire made its way closer and closer to the big screen, the film's creators hired some big-time rockers to play the band in the movie. Their picks? Selway, Greenwood, and Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker.

However, there is a real-life Winnipeg band called the Wyrd Sisters. They were even nominated for a Juno, and they exploded over the incident, suing pretty much everyone involved-- even the seemingly innocent Selway, Greenwood, and Cocker. Warner Brothers offered Wyrd Sisters co-founder Kim Baryluk $5,000, and later $50,000, to share the band's name in the film, but she declined, telling ChartAttack.com, "Do you know what I've spent on the band in the past 10 years? In the last 10 years I've spent more than a million dollars. Offering me $50,000 is more than an insult."

The band name wasn't even mentioned in the film, never mind the "ei" spelling. But, as reported in Pitchfork's previous story on the incident, the Sisters reported via their website, "If we went somewhere new to play, after this movie is released, how many people would show up expecting the fellows from Radiohead?" and continued to move ahead with the lawsuit due to the association that had been established between film and artist.

But now, according to Canada.com's National Post, the Wyrd Sisters not only lost the court battle, but have been ordered to pay $140,000 of Warner Brothers' legal fees due to the "highly intrusive" lawsuit and criticism of the judiciary involved in the legal battle.

Now the Sisters are asking their fans for donations. If they have any fans left.