Lenmo too similar to Venmo TM, warns PayPal
Money transfer service PayPal has taken a competitor to court over claims that its name is an “obvious imitation” of PayPal’s payment platform Venmo.
Paypal said that it brought the lawsuit, which was filed on Wednesday, July 3 at the US District Court for the Northern District of California, to “remedy the harm Lenmo threatens to cause to the Venmo user experience and PayPal’s Venmo brand”.
Venmo is a person-to-person payment solution which allows users to ‘split the bill’ with friends and lend money to each other. It has more than 40 million users and an expected revenue of $300 million this year.
According to the claim, person-to-person lending app Lenmo has attempted to trade on the Venmo’s goodwill in connection with overlapping digital and mobile payment services.
“The overlap between the ‘Venmo’ and ‘Lenmo’ marks and the parties’ services will cause consumers to believe mistakenly that Venmo is affiliated with Lenmo, and to associate the poor reputation of Lenmo’s offerings with Venmo or other PayPal services,” said the suit.
PayPal claims it has made “extensive” efforts to avoid this lawsuit—PayPal said that through a series of letters, emails and phone calls, it raised its concerns and asked Lenmo to change its name and discontinue use of the ‘Lenmo’ mark.
“Lenmo has not changed course. Lenmo continues to use the ‘Lenmo’ name and mark on its website (http://www.golenmo.com) and its mobile app, and has an application pending to register the ‘Lenmo’ mark with the US Patent and Trademark Office,” added the claim.
The press has also noted the similarities between the two, noted PayPal. In advance of Lenmo’s app launch, blog Bank Innovation described the product as “the Venmo for Lenders.”
The suit concluded: “PayPal’s mission is to bring its customers reliable and secure payment services they can trust. By deceiving customers and getting a free ride on the Venmo brand, Lenmo threatens that mission. Lenmo’s continuing willful conduct has left PayPal with no alternative but to bring this lawsuit.”
In a statement to WIPR, a Lenmo spokesperson said: "Lenmo has built a growing community of unbiased lending for Americans who are currently underserved by big corporations and financial institutions. Our mobile platform is used by 80,000 lenders and borrowers of all sizes and rapidly growing."
Lenmo added: "Our name comes from our mission to provide a solution for those looking to lend money, it is what fuels us every day and the over $1.2 million of loans already processed our app is a testament to our product. We are in the business of lending, not sending and continue to provide an easy to use high-quality platform for the investors, financial institutions, small lending businesses and everyday people looking to lend and borrow money on our platform."
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