As Ripple looks to be getting close to vindication in the everlasting lawsuit filed against it regarding “unlawful” sales of XRP, the San Francisco-based company will now be on its way to face another case bordering on trademark infringement at the Federal Court of Australia.
The lawsuit was contained in a statement by Rohan Pearce, the executive editor at Communications Days, a top news agency for telecom industry in Australia and New Zealand.
Rohan, who is also an erstwhile editor at an Australian IT and tech news platform, Computerworld, said The New Payment Platform, (NPP) and Australian industry-wide payments platform on August 20 filed a case against Ripple Labs, for infringing on its trademark right.
NPP filed the case before New South Wales Registry, in the Federal Court of Australia, and the case has been registered with an application number NSD916/2020. Meanwhile, details of the trademark violation are yet to be known.
The first stage of the hearing known as Interlocutory Hearing was presided by one Justice Burley at the Court Room 19A via web conference, and it was adjourned for pre-hearing.
NPP was represented by Clayton Utz, an Australian-based law firm established in 1833. Clayton Utz was founded by George Robert Nichols, and it is regarded as one of the big six Australian law firms.
The case is due for another hearing titled “Case Management Hearing” on 26 of August, also via web conference. However, it will be presided by Justice Thawley this time around.
Signed by the court’s secretary, the case document stated that NPP is due to serve Ripple Labs a copy of the document via Ripple’s attorney, Mr. Thomas M. Hadid of Kilpatrick Townsend Attorneys. The copy is to be sent to Mr. Hadid through electronic mail.
According to the order of the court, NPP must serve Ripple the document on or before Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) on August 20.
Similarly, Ripple must also file a notice of address for service in compliance with r 5.02 of the Federal Court Rules within 5 business days upon receiving the document.
For the past few months Ripple Labs has been facing numerous lawsuits, however, the case filed by Simmons in March 2018 has been the most concerning.
I read something like this somewhere. However, the article included ripple Labs was sued because the company launched its PayID in Australia. The article also revealed NPP has been operating its own PayID in Australia for some years. As a matter of fact NPP felt Ripple’s act it’s an infringement on their trademark.
Nonetheless, I don’t really know how this new technologies work but if the traditional banking system make use of the traditional account numbers to present customers identity (ID). Maybe this new Blockchain technology is designed to use PayID which either uses Email Address or Phone Number to represent customers Identities, just like all banks in the traditional banking system make use of account numbers to represent customers ID.
However, this only represents my view and I am fully open to corrections and clarifications.