When a name becomes a nightmare: Inside Britain's IP dispute epidemic

IP disputes are on the rise, with 446 new cases recorded in 2025 by the Business and Property Courts of England and Wales – a 14.9% increase from 388 cases in 2024.

Behind these stark numbers lie stories of entrepreneurs spending life-changing sums to protect what should have been theirs all along. 

Neil Potts knows this pain intimately. The co-founder of The Vurger Co, once a darling of London's plant-based dining scene, with its own product range, including cheezy vegan sauce and smoky bacon vegan mayo, selling across the US and UAE, spent close to $100,000 fighting a trademark dispute with a Los Angeles food truck – only to end up exactly where he'd proposed at the very beginning. 

A $100k needless dispute

Neil explained:

"We registered in the UK and EU initially, and then after a year of trading, we were invited in 2017 to trade at a big food festival in Los Angeles.

"We then decided to file our US trademark, and we were told that another company, which launched in Los Angeles two years after us, was also trying to file for the same trademark. We were effectively blocking each other's applications."

Neil said they contacted the other company and proposed a simple coexistence arrangement, but that didn't work. And what followed was an 18-month legal battle that drained resources from both sides.

He continued:

"It went down probably an 18-month path. We both spent over $100k on a needless dispute, and the solution was a settlement that we could each carry on and tolerate each other, which was the same place that I originally proposed anyway." 

The entire nightmare could have been avoided for a fraction of the cost.

A distant dream

When The Vurger Co launched in 2016, Neil and his co-founder, Rachel, had the foresight to register their trademark in the UK and EU. They even registered the word "vurger" itself as a word mark – "which is stronger than a visual logo mark, because it covers the use of the word vurger in any capacity within the registered categories," Neil explained. 

Their solicitor asked if they wanted to register in the US too.

"In 2016, we had distant dreams of opening in the US one day, but we were literally just getting started in London. It was a lot more to register in the US as well. So we thought we would do it at a later date, and hoped it wouldn't cause a problem," he reflected.  

However, it became one. By 2019, The Vurger Co was selling products in US supermarkets and negotiating restaurant leases in LA.

"We got very, very close. We almost signed a lease in February 2020. Luckily, we didn't, because obviously things would have been difficult after that," he said. 

But the trademark dispute forced them into an expensive holding pattern, even though their US attorney believed they had "a strong case" based on their US trade pre-dating the other brand,  and their established UK and international trading history. 

"We were trying to resolve it peacefully, even though that was frustrating as we felt fully justified in owning the IP," Neil admitted, "because if we'd gone to court over it in the US, we would have ended up spending well over $500k on trying to resolve a problem that probably wouldn't have been worth solving." 

One battle after another

The US dispute was far from their only trademark headache. Someone opened a food stand in a UAE shopping centre under The Vurger Co name, despite the company having registered trademarks and actively selling products in multiple Middle Eastern supermarkets. Neil had to deploy lawyers again to force a name change, which was successful.

Then came an encounter with a far bigger fish. When Burger King launched a plant-based burger in Spain and called it a "vurger," Neil's team sent a cease-and-desist letter.

"To be fair, they changed it as well. I guess they just didn't want the hassle," he said. By the end, The Vurger Co had registered trademarks in 25 countries.

"Just because we wanted to avoid this problem," said Neil. But even an arsenal of trademarks often proves to be insufficient protection. 

"You can have all the trademarks you want," he reflected. "If you can't afford to defend your trademark, then people will try it on. The lawyers always win. That's something I've learnt."

It's a lesson hundreds more British entrepreneurs are learning the hard way. In the age of AI and intensifying competition between businesses, protecting business ideas has never been more crucial. 

Yet for bootstrapped start-ups and small businesses, the cost of IP protection – and especially IP enforcement – can be existential.  

Copycat

One Brighton business owner, Rebekah Oakes, lost significant trade after a competitor copied the look and feel of her website and service descriptions. Despite having done everything properly to protect her IP, she couldn't afford litigation. Google's algorithms couldn't determine who came first, downgrading her search rankings. She was effectively punished for being plagiarised. 

Another member, Isobel Perl, had to do a total rebrand after she lost the right to trade under her own surname, leaving her potentially with £500,000 worth of fresh stock under the Perl brand. Thankfully, she sold all her stock and saw her first six-figure month, and the new brand, Isobel Perl, is already a hit, she shared recently on Instagram. 

From restaurants to consultancy

The Vurger Co ultimately closed its doors in 2024, a casualty not of trademark battles but of the perfect storm that hit hospitality.

Neil said:

"COVID and then everything that happened after that."

The company had survived the pandemic, even opening a Manchester location, but "there were 500 fundamental things that on their own would have been challenging for a business, but it seemed like they all came at once from 2020 onwards," he continued.

"Business rates, the war in Ukraine that spiked energy costs, and the cost of goods. We struggled along for probably three years."

Now based in Los Angeles, Neil and his co-founder have pivoted to Silverwood Rose, a consultancy helping British brands expand to the US and connecting entrepreneurs with capital. It's work that allows him to share hard-won wisdom. 

His advice to new founders is unequivocal: invest in IP protection from day one, and think globally even when you're acting locally. 

"Trademarks are a nightmare," he said bluntly. "I really would advocate for more knowledge and more awareness in that space. I think people just assume it won't be an issue. But even for tiny businesses like us, it can be a major problem and  very expensive." 

Having your intellectual property misappropriated can be both frustrating and damaging, but taking the right steps quickly can help you protect your rights. 

The new reality 

As IP cases surge past 400 annually in England and Wales, intellectual property is no longer a concern just for large corporations with deep legal pockets. In an era of global digital commerce, a small London market-stall-turned-restaurant can find itself in a transatlantic trademark war with a Los Angeles food truck. 

The question for Britain's entrepreneurs isn't whether to invest in IP protection; it's whether they can afford not to. 

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