Telegram ordered to pay $625K in fees over ‘GRAM’ ticker lawsuit

San Francisco, Nov 4 : A US District Court has ordered mobile messaging service Telegram to pay nearly $625,000 in legal fee to a small crypto firm called Lantah LLC.
Telegram filed a lawsuit against Lantah in 2018 over the use of ‘GRAM’ ticker, bringing claims of copyright infringement, false designation of origin and unfair competition.
However, US District Judge Charles Breyer in a November 2 ruling ordered Telegram to pay Lantah $618,240 in attorney’s fees and $6,737.35 in costs.
Telegram engineers in 2017 began working on the blockchain platform called Telegram Open Network (TON) and a cryptocurrency they were going to name GRAM.
In 2018, Lantah applied for the GRAM mark with the US Patent and Trademark Office.
However, Telegram faced other legal challenges to its cryptocurrency project as it came under scrutiny from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).