Defiant salon owner vows to fight 'aggressive' trademark battle with beauty giant L'Oreal over her nkd brand
Rebecca Dowdeswell, 49, has been locked in a legal dispute with the global cosmetics firm and says she has already spent more than £30,000 defending her position.
The mother-of-two, from Nottingham, runs the waxing salon 'nkd', a business she first trademarked in 2009; however, the protection expired after ten years, requiring renewal.
Under current rules, companies have a six-month window to reapply for a lapsed trademark, but if they miss the deadline, they must start a new application from scratch.
Ms Dowdeswell admitted she had put the renewal 'on the list' but said it wasn't 'at the top', calling the decision 'naive'.
Her business was forced to shut during the Covid-19 pandemic, with the following two years proving 'so hard' for those in the beauty sector.
By the time she reapplied for the trademark in 2022, she was met with a formal objection from L'Oréal.
The French company argued that her brand name 'nkd' could cause 'consumer confusion' with its own 'Naked' eyeshadow range.
Rebecca Dowdeswell, 49, has been locked in a legal dispute with the global cosmetics firm and says she has already spent more than £30,000 defending her position
But rather than back down, Ms Dowdeswell has launched a counterclaim and is now taking on the £233billion firm herself.
An Intellectual Property Office (IPO) hearing has now been scheduled to take place later this year, after the unyielding business owner demanded that L'Oréal withdraw several of its own trademark applications.
She said: 'I don't feel like I should have been put in this situation in the first place.
'People typically don't challenge them; I've stuck it out.
'We sort of turned the tables and filed actions against them to rescind some of the trademark. We're spelt differently and pronounced differently, which is a huge part of my frustration.
'The UK beauty market as a whole is a massive market. We're not Naked, we're nkd. We're very tied to just waxing and hair removal products. They can get away with it because they're L'Oréal - this is sheer corporate bullying.'
She said she had no choice but to fight for her company, which she has invested so much time in.
'It's a trend that you see - they know they have little chance of winning, but they know their pockets are so much deeper than my own.
'You would probably get 90 per cent of companies walking away. I was put in an impossible situation really. I could either walk away from the brand I spent the last 13 years building up or I could defend this and fight this, and it's cost me a lot.
'It has been a huge drain on the financial side but also the impact on myself and my family has been enormous.'
Companies have a six-month window to reapply for their trademark after it runs out, or else they have to submit an entirely new application.
She said the pandemic delayed her reinstating the trademark, and she was then left frustrated when her application was objected.
She added: 'It cannot be fair or right that small companies such as mine are put in this position.
'And if the huge corporations didn't routinely exploit their power and abuse the rules of the UK IPO, knowing that they will likely get away with it due to their sheer size and domination of the market, then this situation wouldn't arise.'
L'Oréal claims the nkd branding infringes on their line of Naked eyeshadows, despite the two being pronounced differently.
The giant trademarked the Naked name in 2004 but left it unused until they launched their Urban Decay brand in 2010.
Ms Dowdeswell added: 'The Naked name is for a wide range of goods which they aren't using.
'We've said this is against the rules of the UK IPO, companies shouldn't trademark against goods they don't use.
'We applied to remove the trademark on goods they aren't using. Like cotton wool, shower gel, deodorants and shaving foams.
'All they apply it against is a subset of makeup - just eye shadow pallets.
'They don't need the trademark on such a wide range of products, it's like a monopoly.
'They have no intention of using it, that's where the abuse of the rules comes in.
'Just because they're a massive company, no one ever stands up to them.
'They first applied for the Naked trademark in 2004. That's 20 years they've had some of these goods trademarked.
'We're nkd and we launched in 2009 - L'Oréal then launched the Urban Decay brand, which has the Naked line in 2010.'
A L'Oréal spokesperson said previously: 'We are wholly committed to resolving any misunderstanding there might have been with Rebecca Dowdeswell.
'From the beginning of our exchanges with her lawyers in 2022, we have communicated an offer that supports her business aspirations whilst respecting our longstanding trademark rights.
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