This morning, Kim Kardashian got up off her ass and worked called her lawyer.
The reality TV star and founder of many vowel-averse brands including SKIMS, KKW Beauty, and KKW fragrance is reportedly getting sued for copyright infringement. SKKN by Kim, the latest addition to Kim K’s collection of brands (is she the General Grievous of the fashion and beauty space?), shares an eerily similar name to a Black-owned Brooklyn esthetician studio. According to Page Six Style, founder Cyndie Lunsford operated under the SKKN+ since 2018. Sound familiar? Kardashian received a cease and desist letter last year, 11 months before the brand came out.
“I have painstakingly built my successful small business with my own sweat equity, hard work, and research,” Lunsford said last year per Page Six. “It’s clear that I established my brand first.
In a statement obtained by Page Six Style, Kardashian’s attorney Michael Rhodes called the lawsuit a “shakedown effort.”
“We applaud Ms. Lunsford for being a small business owner and following her dreams,” Rhodes added. “But that doesn’t give her the right to wrongfully claim that we’ve done something wrong. 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,” he said.
Rhodes added that the lawsuit is “less about the law of trademarks and more about trying to leverage a settlement by threatening to harm Ms. Kardashian’s name and reputation.”
SKKN by Kim launched on June 21.