I’m building this site on my iPhone and trying to gain momentum for this in my spare time while working 3 jobs and camping in my car. Please share. There are quite a few exhibits of evidence I’ll add a whole section to this site for. Emails, texts, screenshots, original art for emojis, a recording and over 20 individuals that had involvement and could be witnesses.
This all started back in 2014 when Kim Kardashian was a user of an app I co-founded called Censorgram, which was available in multiple app stores. Censorgram was the first app to allow users to add keywords, emojis or phrases and automatically remove unwanted comments from their Instagram app.
Kim Kardashian being a large public figure obviously had a need for this application. One day, I received a message from her close friend Jonathan Cheban who told me that Kim was interested in partnering on our already-running app and interested in possibly being the face of it. Kim then reached out to me by phone to discuss being a potential partnership.
Our team was invited our to Calabasas to meet with Kim, her mother Kris Jenner and their attorneys to discuss how we could move this partnership forward. After verbally agreeing to a 60%-40% split (us/them) for Censorgram, we pitched them another idea based on other projects we already had. That idea was "Kimoji." Kim and her mother loved the idea and verbally agreed to go into 50/50 partnership with our team on this project.
Everyone was ready to move forward until things took a turn. One day Kim called and asked if we had filed the trademark for Kimoji. Since it was her likeness, we wanted to wait and file it with her team, also because we were equal partners with her camp on this project. Kim told us that her team would file the trademark and take care of it. A few weeks later, we received a phone call from Kim asking us who was sharing private information about her. My partner at the time had texted a friend and said he was excited that he was about to partner with her dream girl, "Kim Kardashian." This screenshot ended up being sent back to Kim's camp and their lawyers said we invaded her personal privacy.
We received a letter from her lawyer, Martin Singer, threatening to sue one of for $5 million dollars if we did not hand over the trademark to Kimoji and the proprietary IP for our app Censorgram.
We were young businessmen and had never dealt with this kind of threat before. At the time, we were not sure what screenshot was leaked and didn't know what privacy violation they were referring to. This ultimately scared my two partners who signed the release for Kim to be able to use Kimoji with full ownership and be able to start her own comment control project. This interfered with the patent we had already filed. However, I did not sign the release to Kim, as I felt there was something suspicious about the whole thing and felt this could have been handled very differently.
Kim went on to make millions off of this app, an idea she stole from my partners and I. I ended up losing everything including my hard earned money and investments I had put into Censorgram, my life savings and eventually my family who had a hard time adjusting to their new financial situation. The stress of this situation put a toll on me and those closest with me and set me back for years as I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees trying to take Kim Kardashian to court for theft and fraud.
She also interfered with a patent I had filed for a process that now is used by Instagram to automatically remove comments on social media. Kim Kardashian never expressed any remorse or even explained her part in this interference. She also never explained why she discussed our IP with Kevin Systrom, the former CEO of Instagram without our permission after her and her team signed our NDA to get our patent file..
At that time Instagram had no intention of using automated comment control. However, less than 18 months after Kim Kardashian’s interference, our process was installed into Instagram's settings. To this day, my partners and I have never received explanation or compensation.
This is not the first time Kim and her team have been accused of stealing from creators and small business owners. Sadly, the way the Kardashians operate their business is by enforcing provisions in their contracts, so if there is a dispute, it is handled in a private arbitration setting, to avoid their shady practices being leaked out to the public.
in 2014 the face to face meeting for Censorgram was in Calabasas and at this point she’s never even heard the name Kimoji or thought of herself as an emoji. Emojis weren’t as big as they are now keep in mind.
All went well for the Censorgram part. We discussed shares, what platforms we want to bring this too, legal stuff like us getting them our file with our provisional US patent info for the process we created etc etc. Her team signed our NDA for that. The importance of this comes up when we talk more about Censorgram later.
Then at the end of the meeting we pitched the mockup Kimojis and Kim absolutely loved the idea. Kimoji became all that mattered. We agreed to split 50/50 on Kimoji.
After the meeting we received a call and were told by Kim’s team that we needed to be coached to handle working with an A list celebrity.
This gets extra scandalous during this few week period of time following the meeting. My family and I are on cloud 9 with the thought of our new agreement with Kim and all the success we’d have together.. Then out of the blue Kim contacts us and asked if we trademarked Kimoji and everything was good but they would go ahead and do that to be helpful. Literally 5 min later Kim calls and is shocked asking “Who‘s Ryan“ and all distraught.
Apparently without my knowledge one of our partners took a picture of some words on a page that Kim used in our Censorgram app. No user handle or private info. Just a little clip of a screenshot to brag. Privately between him and a friend. Well this friend was jealous and actually had a friend in Chicago that knew someone in Kim & Kanye’s world. Narayans friend Alice Gorodetsky is friends with Gene Brusilovsky and he‘s close to Jonathan Cheban who is obviously friends with Kim.
They intentionally sent the screenshot in hopes it would interfere. It did.
Gene admitted to this at a party in Chicago and how it was done intentionally to hurt Narayan potentially and disrupt the partnership with Kardashian.
Kim backed out and threatened to sue us for 5 Million if we didn’t hand over Kimoji rights and give her the ability to do her own comment control app. Which blocked our patent hopes.
The Kimoji trademark was filed by Kim’s company 5 minutes after her staged phone call. So to be clear she called us and asked if we trademarked KimojI stating all is a go ahead.. sounding excited. Then 5 minutes later, after her team secured the trademark, she called us asking who is Ryan and why is he spreading her info. Which nothing of that sort was ever done. This is fraud through and through. She’s gotten away with it until now because she’s incredibly wealthy.
Aside from this.. A few years later we noticed Instagram added the process we created for Censorgram to their settings even after their CEO at the time, Kevin Systrom told Kim clearly they wouldn’t use that type of comment control. Kim, Kanye and former IG CEO used to hang out and there’s media out there showing them together. Kanye at that time said he wanted to “fix Instagram“. The timing of Instagram starting a comment control app right after our meeting with Kim is incredibly suspicious. To this day, I don't have answers and would like Kim to explain herself.
Theres more stay tuned!
Shortly after we noticed Instagram using our process we found some very alarming evidence in our old emails. Remember when Kim called us asking who’s Ryan and why is he sending her info around Chicago? Well she damn well knew who Narayan was! I introduced him in the email as Narayan and she replied nice to meet him as Ryan. Several instances back then their team referred to Narayan as “Ryan”. so that means she knew of this before we signed their NDA at the meeting in CA. She kept this in her pocket to use against us and lured us in to get our comment control app, Censorgram. Then she got Kimoji too and wasn’t even expecting that part.
I‘ll add more about our last attorney Robert Hantman but he told me to withdraw the lawsuit and try to see where arbitration goes.. No where that’s where.. and no one knows why Hantman suggested that. I went in debt over that lawsuit. So now I’m getting creative and I won’t shut up about it.
We had several emoji projects already started before we met Kim. Wall Street Emojis and a Sexy Emojis app. So we just took some existing images and then did some of her, Kris and Kanye for fun. To see if they’d like the idea.. Kimoji was just a side project idea we added to impress her. We figured she would be excited to see it and do that project while we develop Censorgram. I’ll elaborate more on how that turned into the Kimoji idea later.
Back to the fraud for the Kimoji trademark. So because Kim didn’t want to partner she used that harmless screenshot meant to be private to threaten us and cause internal turmoil. We had no idea what was going on. The threatening letter from Martin Singers office had me shaking as I had something to lose then. The threat made it seem like we really messed up. With all the parties involved it took a bit to understand what they were even talking about. Come to find out a different attorney I had look at this said the statute they said we supposedly violated in the threat from Singer wasn’t applicable to what we supposedly even did! This whole thing was a complete sh*t show and Kardashian / Jenner made tons of money for years off of it. I lost everything. She could have said in light of this thing with Narayan I’d like to part ways and buy the Kimoji trademark. Done and done. We would have walked and kept pushing our Censorgram app. Without securing the patent for the process it was dead. Then the entire investment was gone. Legal fees for this and the patent was wasted. Personal issues and lack of funds stemming from all this has made a comeback refiling of the lawsuit incredibly hard.
Hearing Kanye’s song Facts where he says “plus Kimoji just shut down the App Store, we made a million a minute”. It’s really tough to avoid getting triggered when they are everywhere on TV and music.
On to Censorgram and how Kim interfered with a potential deal we had with a Shark from Shark Tank the TV show. She said she knew this person personally and would talk to them.. I have the email proving this putting her on the spot but it also includes the Shark so I may hold off on adding that name for now.
I put a screenshot of Censorgram above. We were on the App Store for a while and had thousands of users. I lived in Oklahoma at that time and the news channels there did stories on Censorgram. Then years later they covered the lawsuit.
more to come later.
Your support and contributions are greatly appreciated.
Donations will help me continue spreading my message on this fight for justice. Your generous donations will be used for billboards, a production budget and legal fees. The ultimate goal of this campaign is to hold Kim accountable so she doesn't continue doing this to small business owners.
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