Kraftwerk: "Our humourless faces are not a pose"

Kraftwerk's carefully nurtured reputation is looking slightly shabbier today: they're suing Kling Klang, seeing a band named after their studio named after an onomatopoeia as some sort of risk to their business. No, really:

“It is not like ‘Kling Klang’ is a brand name, like ‘Xerox’,” [says Kling Klang] manager Stefania Paolini. “It is an idiomatic German phrase, so we really don’t see the substance of their claim. We were aware of Kraftwerk’s notorious bent in sueing people and we were expecting the notice from one moment to another since we first stepped on German soil.

“And they way they have notified the claim was even funny… We received the letter in the form of a fax from some random promoter and the notice had all our addresses on it, kinda ‘we know where you live’ style.”

Kraftwerk have registered klingklang as a trademark, although - the sharper eyed amongst you will spot - that's not quite the same as the unregisterable kling klang.