Hon'ble Justice Manish Pitale of the Hon'ble Bombay High Court pronounced a landmark judgement on 06 April 2023 in a Commercial Suit titled Phonepe Pvt. Ltd. v. Resilient Innovations Pvt. Ltd., COMM IP SUIT No. 160 of 2022.
The Commercial Suit was filed by the Plaintiff - Phonepe Pvt. Ltd., alleging violation of their rights in the trademark PHONEPE due to the adoption and use of the mark POSTPE by Resilient Innovations Pvt. Ltd.
Accordingly, the Plaintiff had sought a permanent injunction, amongst other reliefs, for restraining the use of POSTPE, which it alleged was identical and/or similar to the Plaintiff's trademarks 'PhonePe', in respect of payment services or any other manner amounting to infringement and passing off of the Plaintiff's trademarks.
The Plaintiff and the Defendants provide online payment services via their mobile applications. The Defendants are a 3-billion-dollar company, while Plaintiff, a Flipkart-backed company, is more than a 6-billion-dollar company.
The Hon'ble Bombay High Court has dismissed the application for interim injunction filed by PhonePe as having no merit.
"The dismissal of PhonePe’s application means that the Court has not found merit in its case for a restraint on my client's use of the mark POSTPE. It is significant that the Court has upheld all the submissions of my client.†said Mohit Goel, Partner, Sim And San – Attorneys at Law.
Earlier in April 2021, the Hon'ble Delhi High Court dismissed an identical application filed by PhonePe to restrain Resilient from using the mark BHARATPE.
Resilient was represented by Mr. Virag Tulzapurkar, Senior Advocate, and Mr. Sharan Jagtiani, Senior Advocate, along with Mohit Goel, Sidhant Goel, Abhishek Kotnala, Deepankar Mishra, and Karmanya Dev Sharma, of Sim & San Attorneys At Law and Mr. Nishad Nadkarni, Ms. Khushboo Jhunjhunwala and Mr. Aasif (of Khaitan & Co).
PhonePe was represented by Mr. Ravi Kadam, Senior Advocate; Mr. Venkatesh Dhond, Senior Advocate; Mr. Thomas George (of Saikrishna & Associates); and Ruby Ahuja (of Karanjawala & Co.)
