On Wednesday, the former chief executive of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd, American company operating cruise ships, sued multinational conglomerate company Virgin Group in federal court in Miami over plans by founder of Virgin Group, Richard Branson, to launch his own luxury cruise line. The lawsuit has been seeking more than $300m (£200m) in damages.

The lawsuit filed by Colin Veitch claimed that Richard Branson’s Virgin group embraced his idea and then asked him to stay out of a joint venture. Veitch was former head of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, who oversaw the company from 2000 to 2008.

According to Veitch, about three ago, he had presented a plan to Virgin to launch a new cruise line that was focused on two ‘ultra ships’. On Wednesday, in an emailed statement, Virgin group said, “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, the company has been in discussions with many parties and Colin Veitch was one of them. Virgin Group believes that the claim by the plaintiff has no merits, the company further stated.

The multinational conglomerate company headquartered in London announced its Bain Capital-backed cruise line project in December 2014. While talking to British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, Branson said that the company is in the middle of negotiating a contract for two ships.

In the lawsuit, Veitch claimed that Virgin had breached the contract. He further said that the company had agreed to a partnership deal of about $315 million over a decade. He claimed that the company later started to alter the deal to diminish his earnings. According to him, Virgin has gone from ‘brand partner to bully’.