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Bharat Pe’s pleas against PhonePe’s ‘Pe’ trademarks dismissed by HC

The intellectual property (IP) division of Delhi high court has rejected the petition filed by fintech unicorn BharatPe, urging the court to cancel copyrights of arch-rival PhonePe on the ‘Pe’ suffix.

In October, BharatPe parent Resilient Innovations Pvt. Ltd had filed six petitions seeking cancellation of registrations held by PhonePe Pvt. Ltd, for the ‘Pe’ logo in Devanagari before the IP division of the high court.

“In view of the provisions of Section 124, it’s clear that the current petitions couldn’t without filed while not the court framing a problem relating to the validity of trademark in (CS (COMM) 292/2019, as held by the Supreme Court in Patel field marshal Agencies,” the court said in its order.

Also Read: PhonePe, Google Pay, Paytm retain UPI market share, even as WhatsApp transactions double

Currently, PhonePe and BharatPe are fighting 2 lawsuits over the ‘Pe’ suffix. In June, PhonePe withdrew its injunction plea before the delhi high court and proceeded with the trial against BharatPe over the use of the ‘Pe’ suffix within the latter’s brand name.

In October, the Bengaluru-based fintech filed a separate lawsuit with the bombay high court against BharatPe’s usage of the suffix for its ‘buy now pay later’ delhi, ‘PostPe’.

“The Hon’ble delhi high court has dismissed the petitions filed by Resilient Innovations (BharatPe) seeking cancellation and removal of entries bearing on a number of PhonePe’s registered emblems from the Register of emblems. These petitions were trivial and unfounded and zilch over a poor decide to divert the court’s attention from its own misuse and infringement of PhonePe’s trademarks,” a PhonePe spokesperson said in a reply to Mint’s queries.

“Being within the similar line of business, it’s imperative that the sooner use and substantive which means noninheritable by alphabetic character in PhonePe is accepted and cannibalizing PhonePe’s giant client base by deceivingly similar marks and infringement be stopped at once. we’ll still seriously press the opposite matters filed by US before the Hon’ble urban center judicature and also the Hon’ble city judicature against Resilient Innovations’ dishonest adoption of ‘BharatPe’ and ‘PostPe’ marks to make complete confusion within the digital Payments class,” PhonePe aforementioned.

Both corporations are argument over the utilization of ‘Pe’ since 2018, even before filing the lawsuits.

“The Hon’ble urban center judicature has not command the cancellation actions to be “frivolous or baseless”. As a matter of truth, the Hon’ble urban center judicature has not aforementioned something on the deserves of the cancellation actions. On a procedural facet, the Hon’ble court has solely directed Resilient to adopt a distinct route to file these cancellation actions, and Resilient is exploring its legal remedies during this regard. it’s once more unfortunate that PhonePe has misquoted from the order of the Hon’ble urban center judicature as regards the conduct of Resilient,” aforementioned a BharatPe representative.

Also Read: PhonePe ‘turned turtle’ in court over its stand on ‘Pe’: BharatPe

In April, urban center judicature had pink-slipped AN interim injunction plea by PhonePe against BharatPe on the utilization of the ‘Pe’ suffix in its complete and app names. there’s shy proof to once and for all say that the ‘Pe’ suffix would be “indelibly associated” within the public consciousness with PhonePe’s services, aforementioned the order gone along the court on fifteen Apr. The case was detected by one bench of C. Hari Ravi Shankar. PhonePe then went ahead with a full trial against BharatPe in urban center judicature in Gregorian calendar month.

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