Kim Kardashian Calls Skkn Lawsuit a 'Shakedown'

Last July, the star announced that she would be shuttering her namesake KKW Beauty brand in order to relaunch it as Skkn by Kim. However, the name was met with pushback from a Black-owned Brooklyn business called Beauty Concepts, whose founder, Cyndie Lunsford, sent Kardashian a cease and desist after claiming to have owned the Skkn+ trademark since 2018 — and it's now apparently escalated into an actual lawsuit.

According to TMZ, Lunsford is currently suing Kardashian for trademark infringement after allegedly asking the celeb to switch up the branding to avoid any consumer confusion, which was supposedly ignored.

In response, Kardashian's legal team issued a statement to the outlet in which attorney Michael Rhodes called the suit a "shakedown effort," adding that "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," Rhodes said. "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."

Rhodes then went on to say that while Kardashian "applauds" Lunsford as a "small business owner... following her dreams," the NY entrepreneur doesn't have "the right to wrongfully claim that we’ve done something wrong," especially after the star's team allegedly tried to work something out with Beauty Concepts.

"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," Rhodes continued before saying that "to our knowledge, Beauty Concepts sold no products under the SKKN+ name."

"Beauty Concepts asked that we drop the SKKN name. Of course, we said no," he said, while noting that the US Patent and Trademark Office "rejected Beauty Concepts’ own SKKN+ mark saying that 'skkn' just means 'skin.'” He also accused Beauty Concept of later trying to "make its business seem more than it was" by leasing a new storefront and changing its website, amongst other things.

Lunsford has yet to respond to the statement. Read TMZ's full report here.

Photo via Getty / Nathan Congleton / NBC