Delhi HC dismisses BharatPe's plea against PhonePe trademarks

The Delhi High Court has dismissed the petitions filed by Resilient Innovations, the owner of BharatPe and PostPe, asking for the removal of some of its competitor, PhonePe’s registered trademarks from the Register of Trade Marks. It had also sought interim relief against the use of such registered trademarks of PhonePe.

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The judge recorded the arguments of the counsels and dismissed the petition with the pending applications. “These petitions were frivolous and baseless and nothing more than a poor attempt to divert the court’s attention from its own misuse and infringement of PhonePe’s trademarks,” said PhonePe in a statement.

The two digital payment apps have been in a fight for a long time over the usage of the suffix ‘pe’ in their identities in different courts. The fight intensified after BharatPe recently launched another ‘pay later’ app and named it ‘Postpe’. Flipkart owned PhonePe took its competitor to the Bombay High Court seeking an injunction to restrain Resilient Innovations against using its registered trademark ‘PhonePe’ which includes the ‘Pe’ suffix. However, the Bombay high court had rejected PhonePe’s assertion of exclusivity over the word “Pe” at the interim stage.

“We will continue to earnestly press the other matters filed by us before the Hon’ble Delhi High Court and the Hon’ble Bombay High Court against Resilient Innovations’ dishonest adoption of the ‘BharatPe’ and ‘PostPe’ marks to create brand confusion in the Digital Payments category and take all steps necessary to protect the value of our brand,” said PhonePe on the development.

“Being in the similar line of business, it is imperative that the earlier use and substantive meaning acquired by Pe in PhonePe is accepted and cannibalizing PhonePe’s large customer base by deceptively similar marks and infringement be stopped immediately. The lack of propriety in the conduct of Resilient Innovations has been acknowledged by the Hon’ble Delhi High Court,” it added.

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