Daily Basket, an e-retailer in Coimbatore, says Big Basket bullying it with cease and desist letter

Daily Basket, a local retailer which only serves in Coimbatore, has alleged that Big Basket is bullying it. The retailer has created a specific website carrying its allegation after it was served a cease and desist letter by Big Basket over a similar name. The letter reportedly alleges that the name of the Daily Basket is similar to Big Basket, and the UI of the Daily Basket app as well as the e-retail website, is similar to the UI of the Big Basket app and website.

Update: Bigbasket has released a statement clarifying the recent events. "We have received several queries regarding DailyBasket over the last 1-2 days," the company said in a tweet on Tuesday. Below is the full statement from the company:

"As a company that has painstakingly built a trusted brand over the last nine years, it is necessary for bigbasket to protect its trademarks. While checking the trademark registry, we recently came across a filing for "DailyBasket", which, in the context of the online grocery business, is a combination of two of our registered trademarks "bigbasket" and "bbdaily". And even startups, however small, need to operate within the boundaries of the law."

"The very purpose of the trademark registry is to put trademark applications in the public domain for 60 days so that companies with existing trademarks may raise objections if any. The typical next step in such cases is to send the relevant company a notice, which is exactly what we did. That said, we've been a startup ourselves until quite recently, and the last thing we would want is to cause inconvenience to another startup."

"We intend to work with the founder of DailyBasket to resolve this amicably while at the same time protecting our brand and trademarks. We will work in a fair manner with DailyBasket and expect the same of DailyBasket."

The Daily Basket claims that Big Basket has asked it to transfer the dailybasket.com domain to Big Basket and that it has been asked to cease its business. It also alleges that Big Basket is asking it for Rs 2,00,000 towards the legal fee spent on creating and serving the cease and desist letter.

"We started our operations in August of 2020. Our plan is to set up a string of mini supermarkets throughout Coimbatore and make them act as delivery hubs for our online delivery business," Daily Basket notes on its website. "Though we have a word 'basket' in our brand and we do deliver online groceries, it doesn't mean we copied their trademarks or unethically copied their website and apps."

Big Basket for now hasn't commented publicly on the issue.

The cease and desist letter, which Daily Basket has made public through the website called bbisabully.com, notes: "By offering your identical products on an almost identical online platform copying our client's website's trade dress and brand in an unauthorized and violative manner, you are causing confusion and deception regarding the origin of your products in the market."

Daily Basket contests the claims made in the letter. Though the "basket" part is common to the name of two e-retail services, the examples cited by Daily Basket on its website do show that the UI of the two services is different.

While fights over brand names and trademarks aren't new, in this instance the strange part is Daily Basket going public. The company says that it has no other way to meet the challenge posed by the cease and desist letter. With its website, notes the Daily Basket, it is letting the public see "how a big billion dollar company sees a upcomer as a competition and trying to eliminate us with corporate bullying.

"We are a small bootstrapped business with no major backing, we alone can't defend our business with these kind of attacks," notes Daily Basket.

Though propriety dictates that if a company is starting a business it ought to anticipate legal challenges, particularly if trademarks and branding have common words and design elements (in this case doesn't seem to be the case). Often such challenges are best dealt with in a court.