Australia Post in David-and-Goliath trademark battle with start-up

ONE company wants to cut Australia Post’s prices by 40 per cent but the under-fire government behemoth is going into battle.

Australia Post is fighting Sendle’s trademark application for the slogan ‘post without the office’. Pictured is chief executive Ahmed Fahour. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

A START-UP founder has accused Australia Post of “monopoly tactics” as the pair face off in a legal battle over a cut-price parcel service.

The national carrier is locked in a trademark war with Sendle, a door-to-door delivery provider that claims to offer rates 40 per cent cheaper than traditional post.

Australia Post has blocked the fledgling company’s registration of its tagline “post without the office”, a slogan it claims breaches its own trademark.

The taxpayer-owned organisation is expected to argue that Sendle’s use of the words “post” and office” is misleading and may confuse the public into thinking that its service is a part of Australia Post’s operations, when the matter is heard by IP Australia today.

But Sendle chief executive James Moody said the legal action failed the “common sense test”, arguing that the slogan clearly differentiated his service from that of Australia Post.

“Are we trying to be like the post office? Absolutely not,” he told news.com.au.

“We’re cheaper, more convenient and we’re the only 100 per cent carbon neutral delivery service in Australia. We are a very different service.”

He questioned why Australia Post was spending public money on a costly intellectual property dispute, labelling it an attempt to stifle healthy competition.

“We’re honoured that they feel we’re such a threat,” Mr Moody said.

‘YOU CAN’T BE 80 PER CENT GOOD’

Sendle leverages existing delivery networks to offer its customers, many of them small businesses, lower prices, by piggybacking off the logistics capabilities of big business.

If you send a parcel with the service, it will likely end up on a truck with goods being delivered on behalf of a large organisation — which had some extra space on board.

Mr Moody said the service sprung up out of an earlier start-up, TuShare, a platform allowing Australians to swap and share clothing, toys and household goods.

After investigating delivery options, he came up with the idea for Sendle, which has been stealing away market share from Australia Post in its chosen niche: small and medium business owners.

Sendle’s co-founder and chief executive James Moody says Australia Post is trying to stifle competition.

“We’ve been growing 20 per cent a month since we launched,” Mr Moody said. “We’ve now done 500 million kilometres of parcel delivery, helped tens of thousands of small businesses and we estimate we’re facilitating $100 million worth of e-commerce.”

In an online economy, he said, “you can’t be 80 per cent good to 100 per cent of people; you need to be 100 per cent good to a target market.”

He said Sendle endeavoured to achieve this through reliable tracking, uniform national pricing to give customers certainty and investing in customer support.

AUSTRALIA POST’S TRADEMARK

Today’s IP Australia hearing is not the first time the national carrier has tried to shut down a start-up’s trademark.

Back in 2013, Australia Post was locked in a legal dispute with Digital Post Australia, a digital mailbox service that has since closed down.

The fight went all the way to the full court of the Federal Court, which threw out the case, rejecting Australia Post’s argument that Digital Post Australia was “deceptively similar” to its own name.

“It is undisputed that Australia Post is among the oldest and best known brands in Australia,” the court noted in its written decision.

“Australia Post has developed an iconic reputation in its name in respect of the delivery of physical mail.”

But the court found that an ordinary consumer would not confuse Digital Post Australia’s services with any similar system Australia Post offered, because the two trademarks were “visually and aurally distinct” and conveyed “different ideas to the consumer”.

The addition of the prefix “Digital” and the different order of the words “Post” and “Australia” in DPA’s trademark were “sufficient to avoid deception or confusion”, the decision said.

“It is difficult to imagine that anyone who is competent with computer technology will have any doubt that Digital Post Australia is separate and distinct from Australia Post.”

A spokesman for Australia Post said in a statement that it would be “inappropriate for us to comment” while the matter was being heard by IP Australia.

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