Fri. Mar 29th, 2024
phonepe v/s paytmSource: Inc42

Withdrawing its injunction against BharatPe, Flipkart owned PhonePe is set to file a fresh suit now, questioning the use of ‘Pe’ suffix in the latter’s ‘buy now, pay later’ product namely ‘PostPe’.

PhonePe claimed to have rights over the ‘Pe’ suffix as a part of its registered trademark. The company had sought legal help previously to restrain Resilient Innovations Pvt. Ltd, parent of BharatPe, from “misusing” the suffix. Now after BharatPe has launched PostPe, the Flipkart-owned payment firm has decided to file a fresh suit inclusive of the new feature.

During the hearing, the Bombay court had observed that the mark PostPe adopted by Resilient Innovations is “so phonetically, structurally and visually similar to PhonePe’s mark that it also thought that ‘PostPe/postpe’ is a natural evolution of the word PhonePe and emanated from PhonePe,” the statement added.

Four months earlier in June, PhonePe had similarly withdrawn an injunction plea against BharatPe in order to commence a full trial against the Resilient Innovations-owned company. The withdrawal had come after the Delhi High Court rejected PhonePe’s interim injunction plea in April.

“To address certain observations made by the court in the pleadings filed by PhonePe, the suit was withdrawn with liberty to file a fresh suit challenging the adoption of mark ‘PostPe’/’postpe’ by Resilient Innovations. Accordingly, while allowing the withdrawal of the suit and keeping the rights and contentions of the parties open, the court granted PhonePe the liberty to file a fresh suit. We will, accordingly, file a fresh suit and continue to ardently oppose the use of the ‘PostPe’ / ‘postpe’ marks,” said PhonePe in response to queries by Mint.

“We do not want to comment on any part of 22 October proceedings in the Bombay high court that have not been recorded in the order passed. In order to maintain the dignity of the legal process, we would await receipt of the order passed by the Hon’ble Bombay High Court yesterday. The bottom line remains that PhonePe has withdrawn the suit it filed against our use of ‘PostPe’. Needless to say, we will continue to strongly defend any legal action that PhonePe threatens to institute against us,” said a BharatPe spokesperson.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *