The digital payments company through senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi contended that DigiPe infringed on its registered trademark ‘PhonePe,’ which has been in operation since 2017..
Refusing to restrain DigiPe from using its trademark till the main suit is decided, a bench led by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud said many other companies, such as BharatPe, were already using ‘Pe’ as a suffix with their names.
The court also said the original lawsuit between PhonePe and DigiPe was ready for trial, thus refusing to interfere at this stage.
Phonepe had challenged the Madras High Court’s August order that rejected its petition, saying except the suffix ‘Pe’, there was no other similarity between the two parties.
“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 high court said in its order.
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It also noted that PhonePe failed to demonstrate that its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) app and DigiPe’s app served the same customer base and that there was insufficient evidence to suggest that the use of the common element ‘Pe’ by DigiPe could result in customer confusion.Further, PhonePe and DigiPe did not have a similar area of operation. PhonePe acts as a container for various payment instruments, including wallet, debit and credit cards, UPI and the external wallet, the high court said. PhonePe even provides its services to businesses and merchants by enabling them to accept payments and services from its customers for the products and services on their platform, it added.
DigiPe, on the other hand, facilitated services only to merchant establishments and the same was not used by an individual customer, the high court had said, observing PhonePe’s inconsistent positions in various high courts concerning copyright infringement cases, especially regarding the use of the term ‘Pe.’ This raised questions about the credibility of PhonePe’s claims, it added.
