Pine Labs on Innoviti’s infringement suit: we will defend ourselves against the ‘anti-competitive’ legal action
Innoviti had filed an infringement suit against payments solution provider Pine Labs related to its processing technology that enables UPI payments at retail PoS terminals.
After an infringement suit from competitor Innoviti, payment solutions provider Pine Labs on Monday stated that it has filed its appearance before the District Court in Bengaluru to refute the allegations of patent infringement.
Vicky Bindra, Chief Executive Officer, Pine Labs
Claiming its 'non-infringing' status, Pine Labs in a public statement, said,
“As leaders in this industry we will defend against such frivolous and anti-competitive legal actions as well as challenge the legitimacy of such generic patent grants. Pine Labs respects intellectual property rights and shall continue to comply with the law of the land. We will continue to defend our position before the authorities and ensure uninterrupted business for our customers.”
Just last week, Innoviti, in a statement to the media, said it was granted a patent on March 15 related to its processing technology that enables UPI payments at retail point-of-sale (PoS) terminals. Innoviti’s patent rights are in force until March 29, 2037.
The technology enables processing of payments using UPI, Bharat QR, and other QR-based payment forms through the same PoS devices used for accepting credit and debit card payments.
Subsequently, it moved the City Civil Court, Bengaluru filing an infringement suit for which it was granted an ex-parte ad interim injunction against Pine Labs with effect from July 16, 2019.
This prevents Pine Labs from manufacturing, selling, distributing, advertising, exporting, offering for sale, procuring, and dealing with this technology through its Plutus Smart or any other device in India, with immediate effect.
At present, Pine Labs' offerings are used by 100,000 merchants in 3,700 cities and towns across India and Malaysia.
In 2019, the company acquired India's leading gift solution company Qwikcilver.
On the other hand, Innoviti claims to process around $5 billion in payments annually from over 1,000 cities and has filed 16 patent applications, until now.
Pine Labs’ investors include Sequoia India, PayPal, Temasek, Actis Capital, Altimeter Capital, Madison India Capital and Sofina.
(Edited by Evelyn Ratnakumar)
