7 Mar 2025
IVC Evidensia denies it is trying to prevent others offering subscription services, insisting it is seeking to protect its scheme and prevent client “confusion”.
Allister Webb
Job Title
Image: © Viacheslav Lakobchuk / Adobe Stock
A legal row has broken out between a major veterinary company and multiple independent practices over the provision of pet health club schemes to clients.
IVC Evidensia has denied trying to prevent others offering subscription services, insisting it is seeking to protect its scheme and prevent client “confusion”.
But an online campaign, dubbed We Are Spartacus, has warned their action threatens the future of independent practice and urged all affected businesses to join forces in a collective response.
The dispute relates to various Pet Health Club trademarks owned by IVC, including a wordmark of the name itself, which was registered in 2019.
According to correspondence seen by Vet Times, IVC regards Pet Health Club as one of its trading names and said its scheme had “built up goodwill and reputation” in the UK since 2015.
The documents also claimed that use of the wordmark by others breaches the Trade Marks Act 1994 and demanded the practices cease using both the term or any other mark associated with it by stated dates.
One further warned that the company would “consider taking appropriate action” if the affected practice did not comply.
An IVC spokesperson said that “less than 40 practices” had been contacted, but campaign officials claim that number could be as high as 100.
One of those contacted claimed it had been using the pet health club term since 2010 – nine years prior to the wordmark registration.
The We Are Spartacus campaign website said others had also been using the term for years before the wordmark registration, adding: “This is about fairness. Independent practices must stand together against corporate overreach.”
Natalie Morris-Webb, from the Malthouse Veterinary Group in Shropshire, which set up the campaign website, also described being “stunned” to receive a letter from IVC about the pet health club that she said had been operating since 2017.
Although Dr Morris-Webb confirmed talks had taken place to seek a resolution in her group’s case, she described IVC’s approach as “heavy handed” and argued re-branding services would be both expensive and time consuming for a group of mostly small enterprises.
She added: “It’s also very worrying to receive aggressive legal threats from a huge organisation, so it was reassuring to hear from other practices that are facing the same dilemma, and we want to extend our support to others in the same position.
“We’ve therefore launched We Are Spartacus, where any practices that are affected can register their details.
“We can then work together and decide how to move forward as a collective.”
An IVC Evidensia spokesperson said: “In order to avoid confusion for customers, and to protect a service providing excellent preventive care to hundreds of thousands of pets, we wrote to some businesses asking them to stop using our registered trademark.
“We firmly believe that there is room in the UK for all types of vets, independent or corporate, and have not asked any business to stop offering the services provided by a subscription model, merely that they do not use our trademark to do so.
“We are equally firm in our belief that our more than 900,000 members, supported by 10 years of investment in our Pet Health Club, should be protected. This is a standard practice in all industries.”
