An unexpected stroke of competition is hovering between global payment giant PayPal and our home digital wallet supporter Paytm. Paypal is based in California and was founded by Elon Musk and Peter Thiel in 1998. On November 18, they rolled out a notice of opposition for the registrar of trademark. It was based on the dubious observation that the logos of both the brands have so much resemblance.
Samuel Niranjan (counsel intellectual property, at law firm khaitan & Co.) mentioned that, “Paytm has been around for some time now and PayPal could have objected to the use of the mark by initiating legal proceedings. This wasn’t done. Whilst filing of oppositions is fairly normal in the industry, in the present case, it may also be a competitive move”.
Further he added, “It seems that considering the popularity of Paytm recently (thanks to demonetisation and the government’s push for digital payments), PayPal may have decided to file an opposition on the last day of the deadline”.
On this, Vaibhav Parikh who is partner at Nishith Desai Association mentioned, PayPal’s this step seemed to stem from arising competitiveness.
PayPal has refused to make any comments in the matter. Both Paytm and PayPal India are stepping back from uttering any comments.
As per PayPal’s disagreement, they are criticizing the “deceptively and confusingly similar” resemblance of Paytm logo with PayPal’s. They mainly blamed Paytm for carrying the same blue shades in its logo.
On this matter, Rahul Dev (patent and trademark attorney at Tech Corp Legal) commenced an argument with Paypal’s logic. He said, ” Personally, I find PayPal’s argument difficult to stand the test of law as no single party can own exclusive rights to use the generic word ‘pay’ in the sector pertaining to financial services. If you review the brand names like ‘PayPal’, ‘Paytm’, ‘PayU’, etc, these can be clearly differentiated by their customers without much confusion”.
