Salon owner's relief as L'Oréal dispute nears end

Rebecca Dowdeswell said L'Oréal had tried to wear her down through the legal process

A salon owner has said she feels relieved following a hearing that brings a long-running trademark dispute she has with global cosmetics firm L'Oréal nearer to an end.

The firm has been opposing Rebecca Dowdeswell's attempt to renew the trademark of her Leicester-based business - nkd - since 2022, arguing the name was "confusingly similar" to its own cosmetics range called Naked.

The dispute went before an Intellectual Property Office (IPO) tribunal on Wednesday, with a judge expected to make a decision on the case in around 12 weeks' time.

After the hearing, Ms Dowdeswell told the BBC she had found the "David vs Goliath" case financially and emotionally draining.

She said: "My overwhelming emotion now is relief that it's over and now I just have to wait for the decision.

"This has dominated my life for so long and I'd quite like to get back to the day job [of running the salon], focus on the run-up to Christmas, which is a really busy time, and look forward to starting 2026 with some positivity."

The mother of two, from Radcliffe-on-Trent in Nottinghamshire, said she had spent more than £30,000 in legal costs fighting the case and that it had been a factor in her deciding to close a salon she ran in Nottingham.

Ms Dowdeswell disputes that the brand names can be confused

Ms Dowdeswell, 49, held the nkd trademark name since 2009, but admitted she forgot to renew it in 2019 during a six-month window.

When she attempted to renew the trademark, L'Oréal objected.

The company said it had attempted to resolve the dispute in "a mutually agreeable" way, but Ms Dowdeswell said it had tried to force her to back down.

Five days before the tribunal, L'Oréal withdrew its opposition to her using the nkd trademark on some "narrow" services she currently provides.

However, Rachel Wilkinson-Duffy, representing L'Oréal, told the tribunal the "core issue" was still in dispute.

'Dispute on paper'

Ms Wilkinson-Duffy told the hearing: "Effectively this is a dispute around the trademark Naked, on the opponent's [L'Oréal's] side spelled Naked as it's spelled in the English language - and on the other side it's spelled nkd, and the extent to which they might be alike."

She said L'Oréal's position had always been that the nkd mark was "phonetically and conceptually identical" to its own Naked mark.

She said there was the possibility consumers might confuse the two both directly and indirectly.

"This is effectively a dispute on paper and not about the applicant's actual use of the marks in question," Ms Wilkinson-Duffy added.

"This is a dispute that has been going on for three years now. It's unfortunate that we are here."

Ms Dowdeswell has been told it may still take months for a decision to be made on what remains of the dispute

Ms Dowdeswell's trademark attorney Aaron Wood told the tribunal: "The marks are similar in so far as they contain these letters [nkd], but we have said there is a low level of similarity.

"My submission is not going to be that they are entirely dissimilar."

He argued, however, that his client's brand would be pronounced as differently - as an acronym - to the L'Oréal brand Naked.

"There's no suggestion nkd is a common abbreviation of naked," he added.

Mr Wood said L'Oréal's case was speculative and its evidence was "loose".

He asked the tribunal to consider awarding costs against L'Oréal, arguing the company had "padded out" the case and created excessive work by dropping elements of it shortly before the tribunal.

Mr Wood said L'Oréal's "tactics" had created "personal toil" for Ms Dowdeswell.

However, IPO senior hearing officer Arron Cooper, who will make a decision on the case, said he was not considering "off the scale" costs.

He said: "It's my view that the conduct of the parties is reasonable, that the opponent [ L'Oréal] was entitled to bring opposition and were entitled to run the case as they saw fit, and they were then entitled to make those concessions or limitations to their case prior to the hearing."