Beckham’s luxury florist wins trademark infringement case against rival

A celebrity florist has succeeded in a trade mark infringement claim against a rival which took ‘unfair advantage’ of her company Flowerbx’s reputation by using similar names.

In Flowerbx Limited v Flowers Box London Limited, recorder Amanda Michaels, sitting as a deputy judge of the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court, found Flowers Box ‘must have become aware of the potential for confusion between the parties almost immediately after it began to trade in 2019, as from July 2019 onwards it received a series of messages from Trustpilot, congratulating it for [five] star reviews for Flowerbx’.

Whitney Bromberg Hawkings began trading as Flowerbx in 2015. In 2025 the company’s turnover in the UK was around £4.3m.

Flowerbx worked with fashion designer Emilia Wickstead ‘in a striking floral decoration of the front of Scott’s restaurant in May 2017’, created a floral display outside Annabel’s club in Mayfair for the Chelsea Flower Show in May 2019, and was reported to have ‘delivered roses to Victoria Beckham’. Flowerbx bouquets are said to have been ‘spotted time and again on Victoria Beckham’s Instagram story’.

The judge found FlowersBox, Flowers Box and Flowers Box London are ‘all aurally similar’ to Flowerbx. ‘Conceptually’ there was a ‘substantial similarity’ and ‘overall…a high level of similarity’.

Both companies 'crashed into each other' despite there being many other florists in the market and online.

The judge said: ‘In my judgment, the only likely explanation for that lies in the high degree of similarity of the [defendant’s] signs to [Flowerbx] and the close similarity of the parties’ activities. The small differences between [Flowerbx] and the signs are insufficient to preclude otherwise inevitable confusion.’

The ‘average consumer would be likely to misread, mistype, or mishear FLOWERS BOX or FLOWERSBOX for [Flowerbx] from time to time,’ the judgment said. There was a ‘likelihood of confusion’. The claim to infringement succeeded.

The judge also found the defendant ‘took unfair advantage of the distinctive character or repute’ of Flowerbx which ‘enabled the defendant to profit from the reputation achieved by the claimant’s hard work and marketing efforts’.

Finding Flowerbx was ‘inherently distinctive’, the judge said Flowerbx had ‘benefited from acquired distinctiveness, prior to the incorporation of the defendant’. Flowers Box’s counterclaim for invalidity was dismissed.