The Delhi High Court recently dismissed all six cancellations petitions that were filed by Resilient Innovations aka BharatPe. It seemed seeking removal of registrations applied by rival PhonePe with Register of Trademarks on ‘Pe’ device mark. The Delhi HC set aside the entire petition in view of a pending case of trademark infringement which is pending before another bench in the same court between the two firms.

“…in view of the provisions of Section 124, it is clear that the present petitions could not have been filed without the court framing an issue regarding the validity the Trademark in (CS (COMM) 292/2019), as held by the Supreme Court in Patel Field Marshal Agencies (supra). For the aforesaid reasons, the present petitions are dismissed along with the pending applications,” the Delhi HC said.

In a statement, PhonePetaggedall dismissed petitions that were filed by BharatPe as frivolous and baseless. The Walmart-backed fintech in its statement further added that BharatPe’severy petition was nothing more than a poor attempt made with the sole aim to divert the court’s attention from its own misuse and infringement of PhonePe’s trademarks.

BharatPe last month had filed several petitions with an aim to scrap multiple registrations held by PhonePe Pvt. Ltd. For a device mark i.e., ‘Pe’ in Devanagari script.

The Bombay High Court had also rejected PhonePe’s assertion of exclusivity over the word ‘Pe’in a separate case last month at the interim stage. Then PhonePedecided to file a fresh lawsuit against BharatPe’s ‘buy now, pay later (BNPL) app named ‘PostPe’ for violating its trademark. The Bengaluru-based startup had approached Bombay HC for an injunction against Resilient, restraining it from using PhonePe’s registered trademarks by using and promoting the marks ‘PostPe’ or ‘postpe’. As a result, BharatPe had filed its cancellation petitions in response to this injunction at the Delhi HC.

“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,” PhonePe said in its statement.

Earlier this year in the month of April, the Delhi HC rejected PhonePe’sseparate interim injunction plea against BharatPewhere it was claiming exclusivity over the word ‘Pe’. This matter forms a part of the trial now as PhonePe did not wish to press on the appeal against the injunction and later sought a final settlement through a trial.

“By taking on a trademark for the ‘Pe’ device mark in Devanagari Script in classes relating to payment services in a country like India, where Hindi is the primary language of the masses, PhonePe has acted against the larger public interest, and Resilient is committed to undoing this,” a spokesperson for BharatPe had said on October 26 when the petitions were filed.

Both of these rivals are not only re-known for their services but also deal in the same industry. The word ‘Pe’ undoubtedly acts like an element of distinguishment which is common in the trademarks of both companies. Let’s see what would be the final order of the court in this matter.

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