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Small businesses "can't compete" with big firms over trademarks

ended 11. November 2025

Scottish finance expert and business mentor Craig Alexander Rattray is calling for stronger government support for SMEs fighting legal disputes with larger companies.

Rattray is locked in a dispute with billion-dollar accounting software firm Xero he says is using a name similar to his own trademarked programme, Know Your Numbers.

But the cost of pursuing a case – quoted at up to £750,000 – is beyond the means of most small businesses.

“What’s the point in a trademark if it costs so much to defend it?” said the Glasgow businessman.

Xero launched its Know Your Numbers initiative in Australia and New Zealand earlier this year. However, it’s the recent UK rollout that has raised concerns for Rattray, who holds the registered UK trademark for the name in the area of financial education and training services.

  • What do you think about this? Do small businesses need better protections?
  • Have you had any personal experiences of being in dispute over a trademark?
  • How important is it that small businesses aren't steamrolled by larger firms?

Responses by 8am tomorrow.

4 responses from the Newspage community

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Arabella Harvey
Owner at Raven Botanicals
As small business owners, we’re constantly told to protect our intellectual property, but few of us can afford to defend it when challenged. It shouldn’t come down to who has the deeper pockets. Large corporations like Xero, whose customer base includes thousands of small business owners, should think carefully about the message this kind of action sends. In accounting, trust is everything and, by undermining a small business in this way, they risk appearing heavy handed, unethical and seriously damaging their reputation. If we truly value innovation and entrepreneurship in Scotland, we must create robust systems that protect independent brands from being steamrolled by corporate giants.
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Pete Mugleston
Mortgage Advisor & Managing Director at onlinemortgageadvisor.co.uk
Small businesses often find that having a trademark is one thing, but enforcing it against a large company is another story entirely. Legal costs can run into hundreds of thousands, making it financially impossible to fight. We need low-cost arbitration for SME IP disputes and caps on recoverable legal fees so big firms can’t use cost as a weapon to bully small businesses. Without reform, trademarks risk becoming a privilege for those with the deepest pockets rather than a genuine protection for innovation.
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Colette Mason
AI Ethics Consultant at Clever Clogs AI
Trademarks are another simple online indicator of being serious about your business, like a meaningful domain name and nice website design. But would I ever think it would "protect me"? No. It's too costly to defend. Rattray is staring at £750,000 to defend something he trademarked properly proves trademarks are credibility signals, not shields. They say "We're legitimate and we believe in this thing" to clients and partners. That matters. But protection? That's the fantasy being peddled. This is another example of big business hoovering up opportunity, and small business left with the crumbs. The only protection that scales for small businesses is being genuinely irreplaceable: building relationships so strong your customers wouldn't dream of going elsewhere, and expertise so embedded that the name becomes almost secondary to the value you deliver. A TM superscript dotted here and there in your marketing? From a commercial protection perspective? Utterly worthless.
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Jill Poet
CEO at Organisation for Responsible Businesses
Small businesses are advised to protect their intellectual property including trademarks. Yet large firms are happy to steamroll small companies – often on both sides of the coin. If a small company inadvertently breaches a large company’s trademark, they are often subject to brutal legal action costing tens of thousands of pounds. Yet large companies are frequently happy to blithely ignore trademarks belonging to small companies. Why? Because they don’t feel small companies have the financial clout to take action against them, so they just walk all over them. In the case of the Know Your Numbers trademark issue, there is an even more abhorrent element to this bully boy approach. Xero has recently launched a campaign in the UK called Xero Know Your Numbers, even though they are aware the core element of their campaign name is already trademarked.