The court dismissed the application for interim relief as the plaintiff failed to demonstrate a prima facie case of trademark infringement or passing off against the defendant's mark 'postpe'.

ORDER :

. This is not the first occasion on which the rival parties have locked horns against each other before a court of law. The applicant / petitioner herein, relying upon its registered trademark ‘PhonePe’ and its variants, initiated a suit before the Delhi High Court, alleging that the defendant had infringed upon its registered trademarks by using the mark ‘BharatPe’. The application for interim reliefs filed therein was dismissed, which was later confirmed by the Division Bench of the Delhi High Court, as result of withdrawal of appeal and the suit is pending.

2. Even before this Court, the plaintiff filed an earlier suit, bearing Commercial IP Suit (L) No.24136 of 2021, against the defendant for having used allegedly infringing trademark ‘postpe’. The said suit was withdrawn on 22.10.2021, with conditional liberty granted by this Court. It was specifically recorded that the contentions of the defendant were kept open and that the defendant could also rely upon the plaint in the said suit, in order to oppose any fresh suit or interim application that may be filed by the plaintiff herein. The defendant raised a challenge before the Division Bench of this Court, which failed and a petition filed there against before the Supreme Court was also dismissed.

3. It is in this backdrop that the plaintiff filed the present suit and application for interim reliefs. The plaintiff adopted the trademark ‘PhonePe’ in the year 2014. It applied for registration of ‘PhonePe’ and its variants before the Registrar of Trademarks. There is no dispute about the fact that the plaintiff holds registration for the word mark ‘PhonePe’ and its variants including ‘पे’ written in Devanagari Hindi script. Such registrations date back to March 2016 and onwards. The plaintiff under the said registered trademarks provides financial services to its clients through mobile phone application, facilitating financial transactions amongst consumers and merchants on online and offline payment modes like Unified Payment Interface (UPI), QR Codes or through debit and credit cards. It is the case of the plaintiff that its services enable acceptance of payments for products and services through the PhonePe application. Due to the ease of using the said service provided by the plaintiff, soon after its launch, the PhonePe app of the plaintiff became immensely popular and by the time the suit was filed, there were more than 350 million registered users of the PhonePe app with a large market share.

4. It is also stated that the UPI transactions processed through PhonePe increased to about 975.53 million in February, 2021, thereby indicating the immense goodwill earned by the PhonePe app of the plaintiff over a short period of time. The plaintiff placed on record the turnover figures starting from the year 2015, indicating that from 19.13 lakhs in the year 2015-2016, it increased to as much as 37,176 lakhs in the year 2019-20. It was also brought to the notice of this Court that the plaintiff spent about Rs.1,01,664 lakhs towards advertisement expenses. The plaintiff also entered into partnerships and tie-ups with various brands in the business of e-commerce like Flipkart, Myntra, Swiggy, Zomato and others. The off-line merchant partners of the plaintiff are stated to be Vishal Mega Mart, Spencer’s Star India Bazar, Croma, KFC and others.

5. In order to emphasize that the aforesaid registered trademarks of the plaintiff have been popular in the public domain, it is specifically stated that the plaintiff sponsored IPL 2019 and World Cup 2019, along with sponsorship for IPL 2021. It is also stated that the plaintiff with its registered trademark ‘PhonePe’ has a large scale presence in the social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn and others. The plaintiff also has its own website www.phonepe.com and a blog www.blog.phonepe.com. The plaintiff has also given details of the awards given to it from the year 2018 onwards. On this basis, the