Kim Kardashian is one of the best self-promoters of all time, but to develop her popular Kimojis app she required the help of at least one tech-savvy app developer. Now, that developer has reportedly filed a $100 million lawsuit over an alleged deal between himself and Kardashian that he says she failed to honor.
The developer is one David Liebensohn, who, along with partners created an app called CensorOut that first caught the attention of Kardashian and her people. He says they reached out and eventually an agreement to develop what would become Kimojis was struck, with Liebensohn and company being promised 60 percent of the profits from the endeavor.
As part of the deal, Kardashian was supposed to file for the trademark on the Kimoji designs in order to simplify the paperwork and to better cover the cost of doing so, but according to Liebensohn in August of 2014 – close to when Kardashian did indeed file for the relevant trademark – she backed out on their agreed upon deal, citing a violation of some of her personal information by one of his partners. Liebensohn says that the sharing of her info was just an excuse that she used in order to back out on the deal, and that she already knew about it when the agreement was made. Despite attempts to intimidate him through legal threats, Liebensohn says he's continuing with the suit and attempting to get $100 million from Kardashian.
Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images
Kardashian's attorney Marty Singer told TMZ their side of the story:
"The lawsuit filed against Kim Kardashian is ridiculous and absurd. The parties entered into a binding settlement agreement in 2014 in which Kim gave up multi-million dollar claims against Mr. Liebensohn and his partners. Mr. Liebensohn waited more than 4 years to claim the agreement wasn't binding on him. Kim commenced an arbitration in December 2018, and after Mr. Liebensohn was unsuccessful in stopping the arbitration he filed this meritless lawsuit. We feel very confident we will get the case dismissed."
Now, it remains to be seen how this plays out or if it makes it into court at all – stay tuned.
