Fight Over ‘Pe’: SC Dismisses PhonePe’s Plea Against DigiPe Over Trademark Dispute

The Supreme Court (SC) dismissed an appeal filed by fintech major PhonePe seeking to restrain DigiPe from using the ‘Pe’ trademark.

“We are not inclined to entertain the Special Leave Petitions under Article 136 of the Constitution of India… The Special Leave Petitions are accordingly dismissed,” the SC said in an order dated May 3.

The directions were passed by a bench comprising Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra.

As per Economic Times, the SC refused to entertain PhonePe’s plea saying that multiple companies such as BharatPe are already using ‘Pe’ as a suffix with their names. The bench also reportedly observed that the original lawsuit between PhonePe and DigiPe is ready for trial and, as a result, threw out the appeal. 

The fintech major’s counsel and senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi contended before the SC that DigiPe infringed on the registered trademark ‘PhonePe,’ which has been in operation since 2017.

Commenting on the development, a PhonePe spokesperson said in a statement, “PhonePe filed a Special Leave Petition before SC challenging the order of the Madras High Court in respect of its registered trademarks and to seek interim relief against DigiPe. Matter is still pending subjudice before Hon’ble Madras High court for final adjudication after leading evidence.”

“Though Hon’ble Supreme Court refused to interfere at this stage, but PhonePe is confident that they will succeed finally in the original suit in order to protect its trademarks rights under law,” the spokesperson added.

The fintech unicorn moved the SC after the Madras High Court (HC), in August last year, rejected its trademark infringement plea against DigiPe. The HC said that there was no other similarity between the two parties except the ‘Pe’ suffix. 

“It appears that the suffix ‘Pe’ of the plaintiff (PhonePe) is not one of its kind and there are other trademarks with ‘Pe’ already in the market, such as Phone Pe Deal, Phone Pe Store, Phone Pe Crore, Pe, Pay and so on,” the HC said in its order.

The HC also reportedly observed that there was insufficient evidence to prove that the use of the common element could lead to customer confusion, adding that the fintech major failed to demonstrate that its unified payments interface (UPI) app and DigiPe’s app served the same customer base.

It also noted that both apps had different areas of operation as DigiPe facilitated services only to merchant establishments and not end users, unlike PhonePe’s largely customer-facing operations. 

Notably, this is not the first time that PhonePe has dragged a competitor to court over the use of the suffix ‘Pe’. Earlier, it also filed a trademark infringement case against BharatPe’s buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) arm PostPe. 

Last year, the Bombay HC dismissed PhonePe’s petition for interim injunction, effectively ruling in favour of BharatPe. Back then, the HC noted that PhonePe failed to make a strong prima facie case for the grant of interim relief. 

This comes in the middle of a slew of trademark infringement cases involving new-age tech startups and big tech giants. 

It was reported earlier today that Elon Musk-led EV major Tesla filed a legal suit against battery company Tesla Power over infringement of trademark and unfair trade competition. In March, the SC also refused to grant relief to travel tech major MakeMyTrip in its plea against Google, alleging infringement of trademark via the Google Ads programme.

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