B&M fights Kylie Minogue in bed linen branding dispute

Bargain retailer B&M has refuted a legal claim made by Kylie Minogue against it for selling two products named ‘Kylie’, calling her “greedy”.

B&M also claimed that the Australian singer is not even the most famous Kylie and pointed to reality star Kylie Jenner.

Home furnishings designer Ashley Wilde and Minogue have launched a legal challenge over B&M’s bed linen and cushion products called ‘Kylie Sparkle’ and ‘Kylie Boudoir’.

They claim the products deliberately imitate the ‘Kylie Minogue at Home’ range made by Wilde. However a spokesperson for B&M has said that the products have nothing to do with Minogue and the name of the products was meaningless.

“We are disappointed that the furnishing business that represents Ms Minogue has been so litigious. B&M sells tens of millions of pounds worth of home textiles each year, all under B&M’s own homewares brands. The duvet set and cushions in dispute are clearly branded as B&M’s ‘Karina Bailey’ and ‘Mode’ ranges, which are brands owned by B&M.

“We innocently named a duvet set and a cushion ‘Kylie’ but nothing about the packaging makes any reference to Ms Kylie Minogue. There are millions of people called Kylie on the planet, and today the most famous is probably Kylie Jenner who has 100 million Instagram followers (against 1 million for Ms Minogue).

“B&M has decided to take a stand rather than pay £10,000– because we don’t think a pop star can ‘own’ such a popular first name. The irony is that the claimants have named one of their duvet sets ‘Adele’ – even though the singer Adele doesn’t receive any royalty.”

The B&M products in question have been renamed ‘Camilla’, however B&M says it is still being asked to pay £10,000 in damages in order to get the suit dropped.

The spokesperson added: “We wish to stress that everyone at B&M thinks Kylie Minogue is amazing and super talented. We love her music but we think it’s greedy of her business partners to think you can own a popular first name.”