A Dragons’ Den entrepreneur has successfully sued a businesswoman behind a rival indoor dog toilet product after waging a ‘campaign of infringement’.
Rebecca Sloan, 39, who secured a £50,000 investment on the BBC show, accused Laurencia Walker-Fooks of wrongfully using her trademarked name – ‘Piddle Patch’ – to promote her own product.
The pair ended up in a High Court battle, where Ms Sloan brought a successful claim against Ms Walker-Fooks, who sells her own dog toilet product, the Oui Oui Patch, through her company City Doggo.
But the judge found Ms Walker-Fooks had ‘deliberately’ used Ms Sloan’s trademark in an attempt to cash in from Piddle Patch’s fame and ordered her to pay £10,000 compensation.
Ms Sloan pitched her idea – real turf in a biodegradable litter tray to housetrain dogs – to the Dragons in 2022, and had been selling under the trademarked ‘Piddle Patch’ since 2016.
It was a huge hit and attracted offers from four investors, but Ms Sloane eventually shook hands with Diary of a CEO podcast host and entrepreneur Steven Bartlett.
Within just three days of the Dragons’ Den episode airing, Ms Walker-Fooks had purchased domain names that included the phrase and redirected to her own website.
She accused the latter of infringing on her trademark, by using ‘Piddle Patch’ in her website, blog posts and source code.
Rebecca Sloan presented her indoor dog toilet product, Piddle Patch, on Dragons’ Den in 2022, and it went down very well
Laurencia Walker-Fooks was found to have embarked on a ‘campaign of infringement’ by using the trademarked name in her website and blog posts to drive traffic
In court, Ms Walker-Fooks admitted using the words, but said it was only for search engine optimisation, and so minor an infringement it was ‘not actionable’ in trade mark law.
But the judge said that inserting ‘piddle patch’ into domain names and embedding it into pages was a ‘deliberate attempt…to benefit commercially from the use of the trade mark’ by driving traffic to her own company’s site.
‘It had the desired effect because, as the claimant pleaded, the result was that City Doggo’s website was ranked alongside the claimant’s when consumers searched for Piddle Patch,’ she said.
The judge found Ms Walker-Fooks and City Doggo were guilty of ‘passing off’ by ‘misrepresenting to the public that the defendants’ product was that of the claimant or was otherwise associated commercially with the claimant.’
‘Further, I find, based on the answers Ms Walker-Fooks gave during cross examination, that passing off is exactly what she intended when she began her campaign of infringement,’ she added.
The court heard Ms Sloan has been marketing her product – ‘a patch of grass in a biodegradable box for toilet training pets’ – under the Piddle Patch trade mark since September 2016.
She claimed to have generated ‘substantial goodwill’ in connection with it, particularly after the Dragons’ Den appearance.
Inspiration for the product came during a visit to the park, with Ms Sloan writing in promo material: ‘The dogs were happy to be in their natural environment and the stress associated with toilet time melted away because the dogs knew instinctively where to do their business.
‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could replicate the outdoor experience indoors? Piddle Patch was born from that desire to bring a natural dog toilet solution into the home.’
Her creation is a biodegradable litter tray with real grass, which allows pooches to urinate indoors without making a mess while being housetrained.
Ms Walker-Fooks said she came up with Oui Oui Patch, also a real grass indoor dog toilet, after experiencing the ‘stress and anxiety’ of housetraining her dog, Tinkerbell.
‘With our real grass pet potties, toilet training my second pup, Bambi, took half the time and half the effort.
Dragons’ Den entrepreneur Rebecca Sloan’s ‘Piddle Patch’ dog toilet product
Ms Walker-Fooks’ rival dog toilet product, Oui Oui Patch
‘She knew the only place she was supposed to relieve herself was on grass from the day I got her,’ she says in her own marketing materials.
Judge Obodai said: ‘When I listened to her give evidence, I gained the distinct impression that she was seeking to persuade the court that she was naïve in relation to matters of business and intellectual property. I was not persuaded by her portrayal.
‘In my opinion, she knew exactly what she was doing when she started City Doggo and started what [Ms Sloan’s barrister] Ms Rogers described as, ‘a campaign of infringement beginning in May 2022.’
‘I am satisfied from Ms Sloan’s evidence, and I prefer her evidence to that of Ms Walker-Fooks, that the number of infringements, their content and significance and the likely individual and cumulative impact on the trade marks’ function means that the infringements themselves cannot properly be described as negligible or insignificant.
‘I also find that they were not isolated or accidental incidents, but were a deliberate policy to promote the sign in the relevant market.
‘The defendants clearly and deliberately intended to use Piddle Patch – and its variations – to promote their product because of the goodwill associated with the trade mark.
‘I have considered them and I am satisfied and agree that each constituted a misrepresentation to the public that the defendants’ product was that of the claimant or was otherwise associated commercially with the claimant.
‘Further, I find, based on the answers Ms Walker-Fooks gave during cross examination, that passing off is exactly what she intended when she began her campaign of infringement.’
The case will now return to court for an assessment of the compensation due to Ms Sloan’s company, although it has already been limited to a maximum of £10,000 by a previous judge.
