Madras High Court issues temporary injunction against DigiPe from using its logo

Madras High Court issues temporary injunction against DigiPe from using its logo

Following a lawsuit filed by the Applicant- PhonePe alleging trademark infringement, the Madras High Court temporarily restrained the defendants DigiPe from using its logo. Advocates P Giridharan, H Siddarth, and Siddharth Govind appeared for PhonePe.

The single Judge Justice C Sarvanan issued notice to DigiPe on 23 December, 2022 and imposed temporary injunction from using its logo for up to four weeks.

The High Court acknowledged that DigiPe had only applied for trademark registration on 26 September, 2022 while PhonePe has been offering UPI services since 2016 and that it possessed the registration for the word "DIGIPE. Moreover, the Court noted that Applicant had issued legal notices in response to which DigiPe had accepted to broke a piece, yet it proceeded to file trademark application for registration of the offending mark "DIGIPE."

The Court noted that the defendants have yet not entered the UPI business, hence the balance of convenience for grant of interim relief was in favour of the applicant.

"The defendant will not suffer or incur loss if interim relief is granted as prayed. On the other hand, if no injunction is granted, the applicant may have to put up with the use of offending trademark "DIGIPE" which is deceptively similar to the marks "Phone Pe" registered in Clauses 9, 35, 36 and 42 by the applicant", the Court added.

The Madras High Court last year in October had issued temporary injunctions on digital payment app including MobilePe and its group companies from providing Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) services.