Ripple is being sued by New Payments Platform Australia for alleged infringement of its PayID copyright.
NPPA, which operates the continent's real-time payments network on behalf of the country's major banks, launched the PayID brand in Feburary 2018 backed by a $3.3 million advertisement campaign.
The court document filed in Melbourne represented an opening gambit by NPPA to gain relief to serve Ripple as a foreign entity outside Australia.
It asserts that Ripple passed off the brand at the launch in June 2020 of its Open Payments Coalition (OPC). Three out of the forty companies signed up to OPC are Australian, with NPPA claiming that each of them assumed a commercial link between Ripple and the payments operator over the PayID registered trademark.
On 3 August 2020, NPPA instructed its legal counsel to write to each of Ripple's Australian OPC partners, FlashFX, BTC Markets and Independent Reserve, to ensure their awareness of NPPA's rights and reputation in the PayID brand.
It also presented correspondence between solicitors representing NPPA and lawyers representing Ripple since 23 June 2020 "that makes plain that Ripple has been aware of the concerns of NPPA in relation to its conduct for some time". Ripple in turn "declined to offer undertakings sought by NPPA."
In its ruling, the Court agreed that NPPA had a prima facie case to serve Ripple outside Australia.