New Ripple Lawsuit Over PayID Trademark In Australia: Report

A new Ripple Lawsuit has been launched by the Australian Financial services firm New Payments Platform over the PayID brand so let’s find out more in today’s Ripple XRP news.

The company behind the new Ripple lawsuit says that two identical names will create confusion and more opportunities for fraud and scams. The company said it has the corresponding trademark since 2017 as both PayID platforms offer a unified ID for sending and receiving payments. New Payments Platform Australia filed a lawsuit with the Federal Court against the US-blockchain company Ripple Labs over the PayID brand according to the statements.

NPP Australia — the operator of the New Payments Platform — appears to be suing Ripple Labs in an IP case pic.twitter.com/JLfWsySzI8

— Rohan Pearce (@rohan_p) August 24, 2020

The statement from NPPA said that the lawsuit aims “to protect Australians from being misled by the launch in Australia of a cryptocurrency-based payment service using NPP Australia’s PAyID service name and brand.” NPPA maintains the remittance network in Australia which enables customers from different banks to receive and make real-time payments as it is mutually owned by 13 banks including Citi, HSBC, ANZ, ING and the Reserve Bank of Australia:

 “There is real concern that two services operating in the market with the same name will create confusion, opportunities for fraud and scams and be misleading for customers, who may assume the protections that apply to NPP Australia’s PayID service apply also to the services offered under the Open Payments Coalition banner.”

NPPA had the trademark rights for PayID since 2017 and the service allows users to link easy-to-remember pieces of information and then provide their PayIDs to entities that wish to receive payments from. The company filed for the trademark in October 2017 but the application lapsed and the trademark was not registered. If you check with the United States Patent Trademark Office you can see that Ripple Labs filed for two PayID trademarks in 2020.

The Open Payments Coalition announced an open-source solution to unite the payments dubbed PayID which created a partnership with more than 40 global companies such as ripple. BitPay, Brave, Blockchain.com, and more. Ripple sad at the time:

 “PayID brings together companies across all industries with an open solution for payments, marrying traditional finance, and the new world of fintech under one standard.  PayID allows individuals to send and receive money across any payment network using an easy-to-read address versus one that’s awkward and unintuitive.”