October 2021 - Blog | Trademarkmaldives

PhonePe Decides to File a Fresh Lawsuit Against BharatPe Alleging Trademark Infringement

PhonePe (a digital payments and financial services company headquartered in Bangalore, India) has recently decided to file a fresh lawsuit against BharatPe’s ‘buy now, pay later’ platform known as PostPe over Trademark Infringement. For this, PhonePe is now withdrawing its previous petition (over PostPe violating the ‘Pe’ trademark of the brand) filed in the Bombay High Court.

The Flipkart-owned PhonePe said in a recent statement delivered that the company would file a fresh lawsuit against BharatPe and continue opposing the use of ‘PostPe’ or ‘postpe’ mark ardently.

PhonePe had earlier approached the Bombay High Court to seek an injunction for restraining ‘Resilient Innovations’ (which operates BharatPe) from misusing its Registered Trademarks by using and promoting the ‘PostPe’ or ‘postpe’ mark.

The Court, during the hearing, noted that Resilient Innovations’ PostPe mark is indeed visually, structurally, and phonetically similar to the PhonePe mark, due to which, even it thought that the ‘PostPe’ or ‘postpe’ mark is a natural evolution of the word PhonePe and has emanated from the same. However, for addressing some specific observations noted by the Court in the pleadings filed by PhonePe, the company is now withdrawing the lawsuit. It will be seen filing a fresh suit for opposing the adoption of the mark ‘PostPe’ or ‘postpe’ mark by Resilient Innovations. PhonePe said that while allowing the withdrawal of the lawsuit and keeping the contentions and rights of both parties open, the Court granted it the liberty to come up with a fresh lawsuit.

A BharatPe spokesperson said in a statement delivered that the company doesn’t wish to comment on any part of the recent proceedings in the Bombay High Court that haven’t been recorded in the order passed. He further added that the company would eagerly wait for the receipt of the order that has recently been passed by the Bombay High Court to maintain the dignity of the entire legal process. He also mentioned that the bottom line of the case remains that PhonePe has now withdrawn its previous lawsuit, and it is needless to say that BharatPe would continue defending any legal action that PhonePe threatens to use against it.

In the meantime, PostPe is heavily advertising itself across various mediums. Recently, it came up with the ‘De Dena Aaram Se’ campaign, which is live across multiple TV and digital channels – throughout the ongoing ICC World Cup 2021 and the festive season. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com

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Parus Files Second Lawsuit Against Samsung Alleging Patent Infringement

Parus Holdings Inc., a company specializing in creating voice-driven applications, has recently filed its second lawsuit alleging Patent Infringement against Samsung Electronics America, Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. in the US Federal District Court for the Western District of Texas. According to the lawsuit, Samsung has infringed upon Parus’ patents concerning device control and voice-browsing technology. The infringed upon patents, as mentioned in the lawsuit, include US Patent No. 6,721,705, US Patent No. 8,185,402, and US Patent No. 7,386,455. As of now, Parus is looking forward to seeking all available remedies, which include damages against Samsung for all of the sales it made by infringing upon the patents in question.

The lawsuit asserts that the infringement on the part of Samsung has been ‘willful.’ Parus now wants the Court to make Samsung pay treble damages along with its attorneys’ fees. It also wants Samsung to be permanently restrained from infringing upon the said patents.

This is the second time that Parus has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung over the use of Parus’ voice-user interface technologies for retrieving information. In 2019, Parus had filed lawsuits against Samsung, Apple, and Google in the Western District of Texas for patent infringement over the ‘431 and ‘084 patents. This case is still pending as it also involves the infringement of various other forms of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs). Parus has asserted different patents in some other district court cases as well, which are at present pending in the Western District of Texas against Google, Apple, and Microsoft.

Taj Reneau, the Chairman and CEO at Parus, said in a recent statement delivered that the company holds a responsibility towards its shareholders and customers corresponding to the investments that it has made in coming up with innovative technologies. He further added that Parus, at all times, aims at vigorously safeguarding its valuable patent portfolio and other Intellectual Property (IP) assets. He also mentioned that Parus is now looking forward to presenting its case in court and prevailing in the said matter.

Parus Holdings, Inc. is a privately-held company founded in 1997 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. It is a pioneer of voice assistants and voice-enabled unified communications, which includes voice search, messaging, collaboration, and video and real-time communications for different mobile communities and even more than 50,000 business customers. What has kept Parus at the forefront of the voice communications industry for more than twenty years now include its patent solutions, its deep understanding of the requirements and challenges of potential customers, and its passion for delivering outstanding customer service. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com

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Mondelez Threatens Primal Pantry for Exploiting the Trademark of its Milka Chocolate Range

Mondelez, a US-based multinational confectionery company, has recently threatened legal action against Primal Pantry, a London-based vegan snack maker, over the color of its Milka chocolate range. Mondelez has alleged that the cocoa bar owned by Primal Pantry exploits the trademark of Milka.

The lawyers fighting the case for Mondelez are now demanding that the use of lilac packaging in Primal Pantry’s cocoa bar must stop, and for every time the company infringes upon the trademark of Mondelez, it must pay £5,200 as penalty. On the other hand, Primal Pantry, owned by Nurture Brands, denies hurting or exploiting Mondelez’s trademark.

Adam Draper, the Managing Director at Nurture Brands, said in a statement delivered that the cocoa snack bars were launched in the market in 2016 in a wide range of colors for having a good differentiation on the shelf together. He further said that the packaging of the cocoa bars is neither in the same color as that of Mondelez’s Milka chocolate range nor in the same spectrum. He also mentioned that Mondelez, despite the legal letter, has not provided any evidence to prove that the packaging color is similar enough to infringe upon the Milka trademark.

Nurture Brands, founded in London, supplies snacks that are plant-based all across Europe. It has employed 26 people in its Barbican headquarters and runs a factory in northeast England.

Mr. Draper is of the view that if Mondelez could prove that the packaging color of the cocoa bar is in the same color range as Milka, he would cooperate with the company, but in no case would he throw away all his products in the EU for an irrelevant justification. He also estimated that recalling the products and removing all packaging that at present is in circulation could cost somewhere between £30,000 and £50,000 without factoring in all the fines.

Mondelez owns many widely-known brands and names, such as Toblerone and Oreo. Even the British brands Kenco and Cadbury are a part of its empire. Cadbury, its subsidiary, lost an appeal in 2019 to safeguard the specific shade of purple that it uses to wrap its range of chocolates.

A spokesperson for Mondelez said that the company owns a Color Trademark in Europe for the unique lilac-colored packaging of Milka and its other brands. He further said that for safeguarding the value of all the brands, which have taken hundreds of years to earn goodwill in the market, Mondelez expresses its concerns to third parties whenever they use a protected brand element. He also mentioned that Mondelez has opened up conversations with Primal Pantry to try and resolve the issue amicably. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com

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GM & Ford Look Forward to Settling Trademark Dispute over Hands-Free Driving

In the present era, semi-autonomous features like crash-avoidance technology and hands-free driving are becoming hotly contested battlegrounds as car manufacturers seek to boost the prices. In the same context, there’s a trademark dispute between two automakers that we are going to discuss here.

Ford Motor Company (a US-based multinational automobile manufacturer founded by Henry Ford) and General Motors (a US-based automotive multinational corporation founded by William C. Durant) are looking forward to settling a Trademark Dispute (out of court) over the branding of their hands-free driving technology.

The lawyers for both the companies involved have informed a San Francisco federal judge that they are attempting to work well on the settlement terms and would undoubtedly report back to court within two months if in case an accord isn’t reached.

The counterattack legal battle began this year in July when General Motors sued Ford for infringing upon its trademarked driver-assistance technology. According to the company, it took legal action against Ford to safeguard its ‘Super-Cruise’ brand and ‘Cruise,’ (which is the name of its self-driving affiliate called Cruise LLC) after Ford gave a new name to its Co-Pilot360 automated driving system – ‘BlueCruise.’

Ford hit back at GM by asking the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to deprive the company of the two trademarks in question. It argued by saying that the whole automobile industry should be allowed to use the word ‘cruise’ freely for describing the driver-assistance technologies. To make its point stronger, the company also stated that the USPTO doesn’t usually register words or phrases as trademarks that are commonly used.

The first time GM introduced Super Cruise, which enables the drivers to take their hands off the wheel for brief periods, was on the Cadillac CT6 ( a full-size luxury car manufactured by Cadillac) in 2017. Ever since then, General Motors has expanded the technology significantly to enable cars to change lanes on their own. The company also has plans to offer this feature in more models. In 2020, Ford disclosed its plans of offering its BlueCruise hands-free driving technology in its F-150 pickup truck, which is also the top-selling vehicle in the United States. Furthermore, it is also offering the technology in its electric Mustang Mach-E as an over-the-air software update. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com

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Pearson Files Copyright Infringement Lawsuit against Former Partner Chegg

Pearson Education (a British-owned education publishing company providing assessment services to students, schools, and corporations) has recently filed a Copyright Infringement lawsuit against its former partner, Chegg (an American education technology company). According to Pearson, Chegg infringed upon its copyright only after a few months following the end of the partnership between the two companies by selling answers to the end-of-chapter questions included in Pearson textbooks.

The lawsuit, filed in New Jersey’s District Court, looks forward to seeking unspecified damages, along with a court order that would restrain Chegg from using the answer sets from Pearson materials. Jonathan Band, a lawyer and an expert on the subject matter of Intellectual Property (IP), said in a statement delivered that the case in question could not only weaken Chegg but also have implications for all the study guides that are based on existing texts and stick to the general selection and arrangement of such texts.

As per various reports, over the past year, the subscription base of Chegg grew by 67%. Many students even attended online classes during the pandemic. Currently, the company owns a market capitalization of $11.1 billion and has 6.6 million users.

Pearson’s copyright infringement lawsuit includes 150 of its textbooks – for which Chegg provides many answers by using the language that is copied or paraphrased from the original questions; for instance, Chegg Study provides even more than 700 answers for questions included in a widely-known biology textbook, known as Campbell Biology.

A Chegg spokesperson in response recently said that the company would fight all allegations by Pearson vigorously as it is in full compliance with the Copyright Law. He further mentioned that Chegg has been helping a lot of students in learning and thriving for many years now by creating a transformative digital learning platform that aids in learning more at a lower cost and in a lesser time. He also stated that the partnership between the two companies ended this year on May 31; however, he didn’t specify the type of partnership they shared, neither did the Pearson spokesperson.

According to Band, determining copyright infringement, in this case, could be tricky. He believes that the case is made even more complex as it refers to nonfiction texts, which often face difficulties in getting the tag of copyrighted material. Let us understand this with an example – in a chemistry or history book, there are only a definite number of logical ways to present the material. The individual paragraphs or words are undoubtedly protected; however, if an individual is only presenting the info in some way or the other using his own set of words, the first author wouldn’t have a monopoly over the way to present information.

The lawsuit indeed expresses high levels of tension between the two companies involved. Recently, Pearson came up with a subscription service that provides the students with access to thousands of textbooks at $14.99 per month; thereby, giving tough competition to Chegg. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com