PhonePe vs BharatPe: SC dismisses PostPe's plea in trademark infringement case

Representative image

In a long ongoing legal battle between digital payments players BharatPe and PhonePe, the Supreme Court dismissed the former's Special Leave Petition (SLP). BharatPe's holding company Resilient Innovation had filed an SLP in the top court against the Bombay High Court's order that allowed PhonePe to file a fresh suit against the company.

The tussle over the usage of 'Pe' has been ongoing since September 2019 when PhonePe took objection to BharatPe using the suffix in its name. More recently in October 2021, PhonePe moved the Bombay HC​ against BharatPe again using the suffix for its Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) offering PostPe.

The Bombay HC had made certain observations in PhonePe's petition and had asked the company to file a fresh petition incorporating the observations.

In a statement on the SC order, a PhonePe spokesperson said that the SC observed during the course of the hearing that BharatPe was not impacted in any manner by the Bombay HC's judgement and the reasons mentioned in BharatPe's SLP did not merit the SC's intervention.

Further the spokesperson added, "This SLP was yet another attempt by Resilient Innovation to delay the proceedings in the legal actions initiated by PhonePe with respect to the usage of the marks ‘PostPe’ / ‘postpe’. PhonePe is determined to protect and secure the rights of PhonePe and the value of its brand. The dismissal of the said SLP by the SC cleared the way for PhonePe to proceed further with its suit at the Bombay HC."

A BharatPe spokesperson said in a statement that the petition before the SC was on a question of law pertaining to the withdrawal of suits and not on the merits of PhonePe's trademark infringement claim.

"The Supreme Court was of the opinion that since the Single Judges order of the Bombay High Court adequately protects the interest of Resilient, it was not necessary to adjudicate on the question of law raised in the petition," they said.

BharatPe further added that it is committed to defending any claim for trademark infringement which may be brought by PhonePe before the Bombay HC or any forum.

In October last year, BharatPe had taken the clash a notch higher by moving the Delhi HC to cancel PhonePe's registration on the Devanagari script 'Pe'. The matter is still pending in the Delhi HC.

PhonePe allows customers as well as businesses to accept payments through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and is a leader in the space with a 47 percent share in monthly transaction volumes. The company also allows users to purchase insurance and make investments on its platform.

BharatPe on the other hand is a merchant facing company and enables digital payments to small enterprises. It also lends to these merchants, while its product PostPe is mainly focused on BNPL for customers.​