Kim Kardashian has one less thing to worry about after a lawsuit accusing her of stealing her SKKN by Kim brand name from a small black business owner has been dismissed. Cydnie Lunsford, who owns SKKN+, filed the suit through her company Beauty Concepts back in January, claiming that her trademark was awfully similar to Kim’s, and the fact that her brand also focused on beauty was evidently a huge conflict of interest.
According to The Sun, the lawsuit has officially been dismissed, though it remains unclear whether the TV personality may have settled the lawsuit out of court. Both companies are now using the word “SKKN” in their trademark, even though Cydnie initially said that future customers could mistake Kim’s products for hers and was therefore causing a lot of unnecessary confusion.
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She also stressed that SKKN+ was a business run by women of color who were fortunate enough to have survived the pandemic — only to find out that Kim had trademarked a similar name, with products from her range costing around $53 for a facial cleanser, while a complete skincare set costs $575.
When Beauty Concepts reached out to Kim’s team in the hopes of reaching some sort of agreement, they said that her team didn’t respond to their request, which is what led them to file the lawsuit, to begin with. Michael Rhodes, who was legally representing Kim in the case, said at the time that the lawsuit was nothing more than a “shakedown effort” from the Black-owned business.
“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,” he told TMZ. “Building on independent research and development, her company filed a trademark application for SKKN BY KIM to protect the new branded products. This prompted the current shakedown effort.
my love for kim kardashian continues @SKKN 🫶 pic.twitter.com/Llu57rdFg9
— adam 🛁 (@adamk_180) November 26, 2022
“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.
“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.”