A salon owner has said she is “vindicated” but frustrated after being told global cosmetics firm L’Oréal was dropping parts of a long-running trademark dispute it has with her.
The French firm has been opposing Rebecca Dowdeswell’s attempt to renew the trademark of her Leicester-based business – nkd – since 2022, arguing the name could be confused with its own cosmetics range called Naked.
The case is set to go before an Intellectual Property Office (IPO) tribunal on Wednesday, but Ms Dowdeswell said L’Oréal had now “backed down” on elements of its case, in what her lawyer called a “Pyrrhic victory”.
L’Oréal said it was committed to resolving the dispute in a “mutually agreeable way”.
The mother of two, from Radcliffe-on-Trent in Nottinghamshire, held the nkd trademark name since 2009, but admitted she forgot to renew it in 2019 during a six-month window.
