PhonePe to file a fresh suit against BharatPe's PostPe over trademark

The Flipkart-owned PhonePe will be filing a fresh petition against BharatPe's ‘buy now pay later’ (BNPL) PostPe platform after withdrawing the first petition. In its first petition, PhonePe has alleged that PostPe violates the 'Pe' trademark of the brand.

“We will file a fresh suit and continue to ardently oppose the use of the 'PostPe' / 'postpe' marks,” said the fintech company in a statement.

PhonePe had approached the Bombay High Court seeking an injunction to restrain ‘Resilient Innovations (BharatPe) from misusing PhonePe's registered trademarks by using and promoting the marks 'PostPe' / 'postpe'.

During the hearing, the Court observed that the mark PostPe adopted by Resilient Innovations is so phonetically, structurally and visually similar to the PhonePe mark that he also thought that PostPe/postpe is a natural evolution of the word PhonePe and emanated from PhonePe.

However, to address certain observations made by the Court in the pleadings filed by PhonePe, the suit was withdrawn. PhonePe will now file a fresh suit challenging the adoption of the mark PostPe/postpe by Resilient Innovations.

In the meantime, PostPe continues to advertise heavily across mediums. Recently, it launched the campaign ‘De Dena Aaram Se’. The campaign is live across TV and digital channels, throughout the ICC World Cup 2021 and the ongoing festive season.

The campaign:

The commercial is running across television channels including Sports Channels like STAR Sports 1 and Star Sports 1 HD; GEC channels like STAR Plus, Colors, Sony Sab, Star Gold, STAR Gold 2; Hindi news channels like Aaj Tak, India TV, News18 India; music channels like B4U Music, MTV Beats, 9XM, Zing; and regional channels like Zee Telugu, Zee Kannada, Colors Kannada, Sun TV, Star Vijay, Star Vijay Super and Zee Bangla. The campaign will also be live across digital assets including Disney Hotstar and YouTube.

In a press statement released for the campaign launch, Suhail Sameer, CEO, BharatPe, said, “We are already facilitating disbursals at a run-rate of Rs 150 crores per month in just two weeks of launch, and I am confident to scale this up 10x by the end of the campaign.”

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