Groupon blames ‘domain squatting’ for delayed Australian launch
The launch of online crowd retail site Groupon in Australia has been delayed by a legal dispute, the company has revealed.
Groupon – which offers a daily deal – has become a global phenomenon, and reportedly turned down an offer of $6bn to sell to Google. Sites such as Groupon work by sourcing a single deal at a large discount which is only available if a sufficiently large number of people in any given location sign up for it.
In a blog posting, Groupon said that the groupon.com.au domain is suffering a “classic case of domain squatting”, with local site Scoopon owning the domain and having registered a trademark.
In the posting Groupon CEO Andrew Mason said: “The worldwide proliferation of Groupon clones has been well documented. One particular clone in Australia called Scoopon, created by the brothers Gabby and Hezi Leibovitch, has been making life difficult for us. Scoopon went a little further than just starting their Groupon clone – they actually purchased the Groupon.com.au domain name, took the company name Groupon Pty Limited, and tried to register the Groupon trademark (filing for the trademark just seven days before us) in Australia.”
Groupon is almost 3 years old. They had plenty of time to sort out their international trademark requirements. Too bad some canny Aussies got in before them, stiff shit.
They shouldn’t get too bothered about it…when Facebook Deals launches here they stand a pretty good chance of getting blown away like the vast majority of the group buying palyers. The clock is ticking for them all while FB sorts out the model.
^ Disagree with above – squatting anothers brand is a bitch move and should be considered no less by other marketers.
Lawyers will sort it out, but it’s still fun to read all the non-trademark-lawyers’ opinions on this one.
Take the $286,000. Quick.
In the meantime, is anyone interested in another leg waxing and teeth whitening at half price?
Not sure how 10 companies all offering the same river cruises, pamper packages and 2 for 1 pizza’s on a Tuesday between 7 and 7:15 are going to survive.
How sustainable are these businesses and the offers that drive them?
Logic I agree – there are a lot of entrants in this space and even though its growing in Oz we only seem to have 2 to 3 players that can be profitable in each vertical. However as GroupOn have a lot of cash in the bank they will no doubt be marketing very heavily and may push out some of the other start ups that dont have the same backing. Time will tell I guess.
These daily deal sites are the flavour of the month and are getting pretty tired pretty quickly. Most people I know have unsubscribed from any they used to check out. Who needs 30% off their next dishwasher servicing? I predict they will be mostly defunct in 18 months.
Damn! http://www.facebook.com.au is taken…
oh well, it was worth a crack!
They should have taken the money and run, now they will get $0 and probably have to pay a huge amount in damages.
Its what you get if you are greedy.
@Julian Time Out – so true. There also seems to be at least one bargain permanent hair removal a day too…
A girlfriend of mine works on one of these sites; for less than a $1 million start-up, in just over three months they were pulling $30 million in turn-over and that was just in Sydney, Brisbane & Melbourne (if that puts things in perspective). This site – Mumbrella – often espouses the power of digital media; I reckon a lot of digi businesses would be falling over themselves for that sort of bottom-line.
Well I came up with this concept back in 2004 with my website Happycustomers.com.au
Couldn’t find anyone to invest, had about 100 businesses creating free offers for other try them out.
$6B mistake – ouch it hurt – lost my house on this deal.
Spotted the trend early and yet couldn’t convice anyone else of how good it could have been.
Spilt milk – no crying – now for the next trend and do it right this time.
Greg Gillespie
Founder
HappyCustomers.com.au
Expect groupon to move soon and they may just end up buying scoopon before living social gets away from them in australia.
It’s a distribution game and ever since jumponit consolidated operations with Living Social they have been putting a space between themselves and the rest of the australian contenders. cudo on the back of all that ACP cross-advertising is doing ok as well.