Hyung Seob Kim believed so strongly in the multi-grain snack cakes made in his native South Korea that he moved to the U.S. to sell them.

Kim said he spent four years designing a cake-making machine and five years building a business around it, convinced that their sweet aroma and the sharp pop emitted as they are created would be a hit with American consumers if stores made the cakes on the premises.

But two weeks ago, 11 years after he started his venture, Kim filed a suit claiming his business, Moonachie-based Delice Global Inc., had suffered a blow not uncommon among entrepreneurs: unfair competition.

The suit accuses a former employee of starting a rival company, Ridgefield-based Coco International Inc., that mimicked Delice Global's model, and of creating a trade name, CocoPop, and logo similar to Delice's Magic Pop.

"CocoPop has illicitly copied every aspect of Delice's Magic Pop business," Kim states in an affidavit filed with the court.

The claim reflects a key concern of any entrepreneur seeking to turn a vision into a moneymaking concern: how to prevent competitors from improperly taking bits, or all, of the idea or business model, and using them to seize a slice of the market.

Many, like Kim, turn to the legal system. Courts are filled with suits alleging that business rivals unfairly competed by infringing patents, stealing trade secrets or violating trademark or trade name copyrights, which collectively are considered violations of intellectual property rights.

Since the start of 2008, businesses have filed more than 80 patent suits and 240 trademark suits in federal court in New Jersey. In 2008, the court had the fifth-largest number of intellectual property suits filed in the nation, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Intellectual Property Owners Association.

Attorneys say that although taking legal action is lengthy and expensive, and the outcome uncertain, it's often the only way businesses can protect their intellectual property rights. And interest in protecting intellectual property interests has grown with the shift from a manufacturing to a service economy.

"Legal protection for inventions, patents and so on has become more important," said Herbert Wamsley, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Intellectual Property Owners Association. "Because in the information age, intangible assets such as technology are more important relative to the traditional kinds of wealth, such as land and labor and capital."

David Jackson, a Hackensack attorney who specializes in intellectual property law, said litigation over brand identifiers, such as trademarks and designs is "part of the landscape" for businesses in a service-based economy.

"We are not selling products as much as we are selling appearances," he said. "We are selling relationships.