In a lawsuit filed this week Colin Veitch accused Virgin Group of stealing his intellectual property.

Virgin Group sued for intellectual property theft

March 23, 2015 1:20 pm Published by Leave your thoughts

In December 2014 Richard Branson, the entrepreneurial billionaire behind Virgin Group, announced that Virgin would be offering cruises in a bid to shake up an oligopolistic industry. Details were few, but Branson stated his intent to shift away from the typical family-friendly cruise affair's typical of Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line, to offer a "more informal, fun, sexy, hip and cool" experience to customers.

In a lawsuit filed this week in Federal District Court in the Southern District of Florida, Colin Veitch, the former chief executive of Norwegian Cruise Line, claims the idea put forward by Branson was actually his.

Vietch states in the suit that he pitched the business plan that Branson revealed the past December to Virgin Group in 2011. At the time the two sides disagreed on how the profits would be split. The original agreement estimated that Virgin would make between $427 and $483 million over a 10 year period. If the idea turned out to be profitable Vietch would receive $315 million. The deal broke off over arguments regarding these terms. Vietch claims that Virgin shut him out of the process and stole his intellectual property in an attempt to profit from it.

In a statement Virgin reported,  "Richard Branson and the Virgin Group first looked at the cruise market in the late 1970s, and our current team has been exploring the opportunity for more than a decade. Over the years, we have been in discussions with a number of parties including the plaintiff, and those discussions ceased in 2012. We strongly believe the claim has no merits."

Vietch's lawsuit accuses Virgin Group of breach of contract, misappropriation, violations of Florida's Deceptive and Unfair Practices Trade Act and unjust enrichment. Vietch is seeking damages and an injunction to stop Virgin from proceeding from their cruise plans. 

If you believe that another party has stolen your intellectual property or breached the terms of an agreement, contact a business attorney as soon as possible. 

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