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A lawsuit is shadowing Kim Kardashian’s happiness after launching a new skincare line. The reality tv personality and founder of SKKN By Kim is being accused of “willful infringement” by Beauty Concepts, a Brooklyn-based cosmetics company.
According to the paper obtained by ET, Beauty Concepts claims they have used the brand name SKKN+ since August 2018. After getting in touch with Kardashian and the French-American multinational beauty company Coty, none of the involved “cease and desist but, to the contrary, upon information and belief, willfully and deliberately chose to proceed with their plans to use the SKKN and SKKN BY KIM brand in total disregard of Beauty Concepts’ superior trademark rights.”
Kardashian’s lawyer, Michael Rhodes, denied the allegations. “This lawsuit is not what it seems. SKKN BY KIM is a new brand that follows in the footsteps of Ms. Kardashian’s successful KKW line of products. Building on independent research and development, her company filed a trademark application for SKKN BY KIM to protect the new branded products,” Rhodes told ET.
“We applaud Ms. Lunsford for being a small business owner and following her dreams. But that doesn’t give her the right to wrongfully claim that we’ve done something wrong,” the attorney added.
“In its letter, Beauty Concepts claimed to own rights to a logo made up of SKKN+ and had just filed for trademark protection for that logo. The business was a one-person shop offering facials from a single Brooklyn location. The salon had no signage and was by appointment only. To our knowledge, Beauty Concepts sold no products under the SKKN+ name,” Rhodes claims. “Beauty Concepts asked that we drop the SKKN name. Of course, we said no. Beauty Concepts then challenged Ms. Kardashian’s trademark applications at the USPTO. Unsurprisingly, the USPTO rejected Beauty Concepts’ own SKKN+ mark saying that ‘skkn’ just means ‘skin.’”
“Undaunted, Beauty Concepts then tried to make its business seem more than it was – it leased a new storefront, changed its website, etc.,” Rhodes reveals. “Several times, we reached out to Beauty Concepts, trying to find a sensible path to coexistence. We pointed out that running a small esthetician business in Brooklyn does not give it the right to shut down a global skincare line. In the end, Beauty Concepts didn’t really engage with us beyond demanding a lot of money. Since we’ve done nothing wrong, we stood our ground.”
Beauty Concepts claims that Kim and Coty “have leveraged their fame to immediately achieve great commercial success and brand awareness with the products sold under the SKKN BY KIM brand.”
Beauty Concepts wants to go to trial and is asking the court to award them “damages, including, but not limited to, compensatory damages, statutory damages, restitution, disgorgement of profits, enhanced damages, punitive damages, and prejudgment and post-judgment interest.”
The NYC-based company also wants Kardashian and her subsidiary to “pay for and implement a campaign of corrective advertising and to disgorge its ill-gotten gains and to withdraw all USPTO trademark applications featuring SKKN or SKKN BY KIM.”