Did Diddy Pilfer Perfume Bottle?

Sculptor claims rapper swiped design from two of his pieces

There's a big stink brewing over Diddy's perfume.

A Massachusetts sculptor is suing the rap impresario for allegedly ripping off a design for the bottle of Puffster's citrusy fragrance, Unforgivable.

In the lawsuit, filed last week in Springfield federal court, the artist known as Tom Patti accuses the artist known as Sean Combs of swiping the designs of a pieces titled Compacted Gray with Clear and Ribs and Modulated Solar Airframe and copyrighted in the 1980s.

Diddy's camp declined to comment on the bottle brouhaha.

"A couple of years ago, my phone started ringing," Patti, 65, tells the Boston Globe. "Everywhere I went, people started congratulating me on the success of my fragrance container. I didn't know what they were talking about. Eventually, I realized that Combs had replicated my work."

Both of Patti's designs have been regularly exhibited, most recently at the Heller Gallery in New York in 2006, where, ironically enough, Modulated Solar Airframe, valued at roughly $40,000, was stolen and remains missing to this day.

Around the same time, Diddys' Sean Jean-branded Unforgivable cologne hit the market courtesy of Estée Lauder. It quickly became established as one of the premiere perfumes of 2006, thanks to a successful promotional campaign branding it as "the ultimate expression of masculine confidence and passion...chill, sensual and sexy, much like the man whose name adorns the bottle."

Patti is seeking a court order to halt the use of the design and unspecified damages for the copyright infringement.