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PhonePe Private Limited v. Resilient Innovations Pvt Ltd
The Bombay High Court recently rejected plea for interim relief to ‘PhonePe’ in a plea filed against Resilient Innovations Ltd., creators of ‘Postpe’ alleging trademark infringement over the word ‘Pe’.
The plaintiff, PhonePe’s case was that it had registered the trademark ‘Pe’ in Devanagari Hindi script in 2014. It explained that the reason for registering the mark ‘Pe’ was because in Hindi it meant ‘on’ and the company provided services on mobile phones.
Resilient, the defendant company which owns Postpe, explained that the term ‘Postpe’ was coined from the concept of postponed payment indicating that the customers can buy now and pay later.
Justice Pitale concluded that PostPe was able to show material which created prima facie distinction between natures of services provided by the rival parties.
“It appears that the endeavour of the plaintiff is to claim that, ‘pe’ may connote ‘payment’ but, in its registered trademark, it refers to the colloquial Hindi term ‘on’, thereby further alleging that the defendant by using ‘pe’ has sought to come as close as possible to the registered trademark of the plaintiff,” the Court said dismissing the interim application.