How much does trademark monitoring cost in the UK?

TMGuard offers trademark monitoring from £99/year (£74 net after tax relief). This includes weekly UK journal scanning, email alerts with risk scoring, renewal reminders, and an AI assistant. Traditional solicitor monitoring services typically cost £500-2,000/year.

How do I oppose a trademark in the UK?

You have 2 months from the publication date in the UK Trade Marks Journal to file an opposition. First, file a TM7a (free) to extend your deadline by 1 month. Then file a TM7 (£100) with your grounds for opposition. TMGuard guides you through your options at each step.

When do UK trademarks need to be renewed?

UK trademarks must be renewed every 10 years from the filing date. Renewal costs £200 for one class plus £50 for each additional class. TMGuard sends escalating reminders at 12, 6, 3, and 1 month before renewal.

TMGuard is an AI-powered UK and EU trademark monitoring platform for small businesses. It scans over 7 million trademarks across the UK IPO and EUIPO registers, alerts you to conflicts, guides you through opposition options, and tracks renewal deadlines - from £99/year.

A TM7a is a Notice of Threatened Opposition filed with the UK IPO. It is free to file and extends your opposition deadline by one month without committing to full opposition.

What 419 Dragons' Den brands reveal about IP and investment

18 March 2026·4 min read

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Every week, the UK Intellectual Property Office publishes a blog post about BBC Dragons' Den, breaking down the IP behind each pitch. They've been doing it since 2014 - 171 episodes, hundreds of brands, all with detailed analysis of trademarks, patents, and design rights.

We decided to do something nobody else has done: analyse every single one.

Using the IPO's blog as our source (published under Open Government Licence v3.0), we extracted 419 brands and ran each through TMGuard's analysis tools - cross-referencing against the UK trademark register, Companies House records, domain availability data, and our database of 9,330 IPO opposition and hearing decisions.

The question we wanted to answer: does having intellectual property protection actually make a difference when seeking investment?

The headline numbers

55.8% of brands that secured investment had registered IP before pitching. For brands that left without a deal, that figure drops to 48.6%. A 7.2 percentage point gap that persists across series and sectors.

62.4% of investments explicitly discussed IP as a factor in the deal. That includes Dragons asking about patents, expressing concern about trademark availability, or making investment conditional on IP filings.

The correlation isn't dramatic, but it's consistent. IP readiness appears to function as a credibility signal - it tells investors the founder has thought about defensibility.

The domain problem

This was the finding that surprised us most: 60.6% of analysed brands didn't have a matching .co.uk domain at the time of our analysis.

These are brands that appeared on national television. Many received significant investment. And yet more than half hadn't secured the most basic element of their digital brand presence.

For any business, a matching domain is often a customer's first point of contact. Leaving it available creates an opportunity for third parties - whether competitors, cybersquatters, or just someone who happens to pick the same name.

What happened after the show

Using Companies House records, we tracked what happened to these businesses after filming.

41.6% of invested brands are still active on Companies House, compared to 33.1% of those that didn't get a deal. That 8.5 percentage point survival advantage suggests that Dragon investment - the combination of capital, mentorship, and publicity - provides a genuine boost.

But the survival rates across both groups are lower than you might expect. Early-stage businesses face high failure rates regardless of investment source.

42 brands filed additional trademark applications after appearing on the show, suggesting continued investment in brand protection. And 23 brands were found in our database of IPO opposition proceedings - proof that trademark disputes aren't theoretical.

The Dragons and IP

We analysed each Dragon's portfolio to see who backs IP-protected brands most often.

Deborah Meaden leads at 61.7% - nearly two-thirds of her investments had prior IP protection. Sara Davies follows at 61.5%. Steven Bartlett comes in at 59.4%, the highest rate among the newer Dragons.

At the other end, Tej Lalvani invested in IP-protected brands 45.5% of the time. The variation likely reflects different investment philosophies - some Dragons weight defensibility heavily, others focus on the commercial opportunity and team.

Food and drink dominates every Dragon's portfolio.

What this means for founders

If you're building a brand and planning to seek investment - whether from a Dragon or anyone else - the data suggests that having your IP in order before you pitch is worth the effort.

That doesn't mean you need a patent portfolio and a trademark attorney on retainer. It means: check whether your brand name has conflicts in the register, secure your key domains, and if you've filed a trademark application, make sure it's progressing.

The UK IPO no longer refuses applications on relative grounds at the examination stage. Since 2007, the burden falls entirely on existing trademark holders to monitor the register and oppose within a two-month window. That means conflicts can slip through - unless someone is watching.

Get the full report

We've published the complete analysis as a free downloadable report at tmguard.uk/dragons-den. It includes the full IP-investment correlation data, Dragon portfolio breakdowns, post-show outcomes, and our methodology.

Check your brand

Want to see how your brand compares? Run a free trademark check at tmguard.uk/check. It's the same analysis we used on the Dragons' Den brands - instant, no signup required.