PhonePe to file suit against BharatPe over PostPe trademark issue.
India’s biggest UPI-based payments app PhonePe, owned by Walmart Inc., has decided to file a fresh lawsuit against BharatPe’s ‘buy now, pay later’ (BNPL) app PostPe for trademark violation and said it will file a fresh suit. PhonePe and BharatPe have been squabbling about the use of ‘Pe’ suffix beginning around 2018, even before the filing of lawsuits.
Flipkart-owned PhonePe professes to have privileges over the ‘Pe’ suffix as a component of its registered. The organization had field a directive that looked to limit Resilient Innovations Pvt. Ltd, parent of BharatPe, from “missusing” the suffix as a component of its recently launched ‘buy now pay later’ (BNPL) product, ‘PostPe’.
PhonePe said in an statement, PhonePe had moved to approach the Bombay High Court looking for an order to limit Resilient Innovations, which works BharatPe, from misusing PhonePe’s registered trademarks by using and advancing the imprints ‘PostPe’/’postpe’.
PhonePe said, “However, to address certain observations made by the Court in the pleadings filed by PhonePe, the suit was withdrawn with liberty to file a fresh suit challenging the adoption of mark PostPe/postpe by Resilient Innovations.” It added that “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.” They noted, “We will, accordingly, file a fresh suit and continue to ardently oppose the use of the ‘PostPe’/’postpe’ marks.”
A BharatPe spokesperson said “the company does not want to comment on any part of Friday’s proceedings in the Bombay High Court that have not been recorded in the order passed.” The spokesperson added “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await receipt of the order passed by the Hon’ble Bombay High Court yesterday…The bottom line remains that PhonePe has withdrawn the suit it filed against our use of postpe.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.”