Talking in regards to the original British owner of Groupon: "...We’re doing something somewhat similar to that in the United States, so, maybe we can work together on this. We can take this to Europe.’ He said, ‘No way.’ We said, ‘Okay. ‘We continued operating. Then we had a trademark for Groupon. That trademark extended to England. We contact him and say, ‘Hey, you can launch that thing, but you can’t use the name Groupon because we have a trademark on it.’ So then, he decided he wanted to sell. I think we bought it in May 2009 or something like that for maybe $250,000, which seemed like a lot at the time and now it seems cheap."
I wonder why they think a local domain is necessary for their business (and is it really). For example, Facebook doesn't use local domains - it uses .com for everything.
It's probably more about the trademark than the domain. The other company applied for the Groupon trademark as well, so trading under that name until the trademark dispute is settled could be quite problematic and using a different name wouldn't be able to leverage the Groupon brand.
Couldn't agree more. Apple doesn't own apple.co.uk so they just use apple.com/uk and use geoip to make apple.com
(by default, can override country) redirect.
I don't know how australians perceive it but in the uk people wouldn't care or read anything into it if it was
a .co.uk or a .com
Launching a completely different brand seems unnecessary and sub-optimal.
I don't have a side to take in this, but I think it should be pointed out that scoopon have a real business that's been going some time and seems to be reasonably profitable.
The name thing seems a bit underhanded, but I think it's disingenuous to simply label them domain squatters
[Edit: I think I may have a bias against US companies intruding on Australian turf. The whole ugg boot saga has left a pretty sour taste]
It's not squatting in a conventional sense; seems more of an anti-competitive thing to make it harder for brand-name rivals to enter the market without acquiring the company. Having seen the number of acquisitions of local competitors Groupon has made (including some operations in South America accused of shady tactics themselves) it's easy to understand Scoopon's motivations, if not their lack of ethics. And chances are if Groupon did build or acquire a successful Australian operation they'd severely dent any hopes Scoopon had of making big profits.
It's a bit of a risk when WIPO or an Australian court can potentially take the domain off them for nothing though...
Agreed. My wife's business recently did a deal on Scoopon and they were great to deal with. What a pity that they've resorted to gazumping a competitor for their trademark and domain here. Totally unnecessary and disappointing.
If they're running such a great business, why would they use a blatantly anti-competitive legal maneuver? Furthermore, if they do want to run the business, why are they making Groupon buy them? Why not just raise the sale price for the domain/trademark?
This move makes Scoopon look like a build-to-flip, rather than a meaningful business on its own, which would worry me if I were one of their customers or merchants.
This is an interesting can of worms and a lesson in being proactive about securing your trademarks and domain names in other jurisdictions whether you intend to launch there or not.
Despite the fact that Scoopon is arguably a real business this really is a domain squatting case. After all Groupon has nothing to do with their business or branding. Registering the trademark and the domain name was preemptive and is leverage to get bought out. I don't really care if they are a real business or not.
Speaking as an Australian, it is important that companies that operate in Australia have a .com.au domain. It's not uncommon for me to tell someone my address (gmail.com) and then find out later they'd tried to send it to gmail.com.au.
I always thought it was a mistake by the UK to use .co.uk instead of .com.uk for consistency reasons but having thought about it, I think it may make the distinction clearer.
So what should Groupon do? Basically they should do what Google did in the UK. For years Google didn't own the gmail name there so branded themselves as googlemail.
By pressing on you're telling the other side that you're not reliant on them giving up the name. It gives you bargaining power.
Suing them is a good idea too. It bleeds money they probably don't have (which clearly Groupon does).
The worst thing Groupon could do is stall their activities waiting for a resolution. Groupon is a time-sensitive business. There's nothing magical about what they do and someone else can replicate it (as happened in Germany I believe).
It would be risky to proceed under the brand name of Groupon however because the trademark muddies the waters. There is the possibility that if Scoopon successfully defend the trademark, Groupon will then be liable for damages for infringing upon it.
Best bet: pick a new brand name, register the trademark and domain name and proceed. Make the other side an offer with a time limit. If they decline, stop talking to them. While this is happening simply proceed. There is infrastructure that needs to be built regardless of the brand name (finding offices, hiring salespeople and copy editors and so forth).
As you gain traction occasionally make them an offer for the name. As time goes on LOWER the offer because by this point you've invested in your new brand so the old one has less value.
At some point the squatters will either give up and sell or it simply won't matter because you'll have built your business on a new brand.
If Groupon is heavily localised, what benefit is there to consumer if it's the official Groupon, the fake Groupon or another clone that's offering the deal, other than the clones not being a "brand name"?
I'm assuming that any Groupon clones would be able to sell to businesses just as well as the real Groupon.
The merchants in AU benefit from Groupon's worldwide brand and popularity. The customers benefit from having the best merchants doing well-structured deals. 500 cities into their worldwide expansion, Groupon has done this better than anyone.
Remember, the product being sold to businesses is a large quantity of new customers. Anyone can sell deals, but it takes a lot of money and organization to move the needle. If Scoopon thinks they can do this, then more power to them. But play fair.
Note to self: If I ever start a company that secures significant VC funding, immediately buy domains related to my company in all major markets and begin securing trademarks as well.
It's not always as simple as registering a domain name on GoDaddy or a local registrar though.
To register a .com.au domain name, you're required to have an Australian Business Number (i.e. incorporate locally). It's easy to get one, but how many other international domain names do you want to register that require extra work?
If you raise VC and you feel owning international TLDs is important, you get a good law firm to do the ones that you can't register yourself online. They will then contract out to local scriveners etc to do the local trademark/domain registration.
Honestly, if you've just raised millions in VC it is a giant waste of your time to navigate the ins and outs of regional corporate law. Pay a law firm, and get back to building your product.
A company such as SafeNames is no guarantee though. They've been in trouble in Australia before for registering domain names on behalf of foreign entities that would not have been able to do so normally. In turn, any domains that weren't compliant were deleted.
I don't know about Australian registrars but I found a Japanese registrar that allows you to register a .jp domain (and other Japanese TLDs) without having a local business address/number there which would normally be required. I'm willing to bet other ones like this exist for other markets.
a. Applicable Disputes. You are required to submit to a mandatory administrative proceeding in the event that a third party (a "complainant") asserts to the applicable Provider, in compliance with the Rules of Procedure that:
(i) your domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a name [Note 1], trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights; and
(ii) you have no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name [Note 2]; and
(iii) your domain name has been registered or subsequently used in bad faith.
Ok, do tell: Please describe the name (Australian personal or business name) that Groupon USA has rights in, to which the groupon.com.au domain is confusingly similar.
Domain squatters may not be OK, but identical business models are just another legitimate challenge (business models can't be patented). They need boots on the ground and it may not be possible for Groupon to physically get there before the competition. Either way, it's good for the end user, who will go from zero to several choices practically over night. It also prevents Groupon from becoming a monopoly.
There are multiple Groupon "clones" on the ground in Australia, a few doing some fairly big numbers. Groupon have acquired one of the biggest (if my sources are correct) in JumpOnIt.com.au.
Scoopons behaviour is pretty low IMHO. Registering not only the domain name groupon.com.au but also the company name and the trademark?
No. It was LivingSocial who invested $5 million on JumpOnIt, which is one of the larger group buy site. LivingSocial themselves took funding from Amazon.
Scoopon (and the guys behind Scoopon and CatchOfTheDays.com.au) also registered other domain names such as Woot.com.au and DealExtreme.com.au. So I think it's a pretty trivial squatting case.
Yeah there has been a few of these types of sites popping up on TV ads. Was wondering where one of them, cudo got the massive funding they must need to be pushing all these TV ads and promotions on thing like the cricket, turns out it's a Microsoft/PBL company. That's going to be some fairly steep competition for groupon in Australia.
If they think Nopuorg is sinister, why give them a direct link and not even include rel="nofollow" Seems like it would help Nopuorg more than it hurts.
Nopuorg was effectively launched in 1981 when its visionary founder, Mason Andrews, was fetally conceived.
and
Realizing at a young age that he was a Social Media Prodigy, Mason further self-initiated his education by achieving a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Basilisk-Online Preparatory Web-Academy.
Edit 2: Reading more based on ceejayoz's reply I see the whole site is an awful spoof on the daily deals concept. When you try and buy it asks for your SS#. Makes sense now why they link directly to it.
There's a comment which suggested that this happened in "England" (the UK, grrr) but the roles were reversed and Groupon did this to a local competitor. Does anyone know anything about this?
Quote: "and this was after you did the same thing to some poor guy in england."
He's probably referring at the technique they've used to get the groupon.com domain from a guy living up in UK. This guy bought groupon.com with the intention of building a group coupon business. While he was sitting on it, the real groupon guys built the real thing and registered the trademark in US (which, somehow, extends to the UK) and told the poor english guy to either take 250k for the domain or prepare to be sued. He accepted the money and everyone was happy.
I know of someone who started up in this space in London in about '07. I talked to him the other day asking what happened and he said "oh, Groupon just overtook the market".
He didn't hold anything against them for it, just said they had better vision and iterated faster.
(that's probably not the story you were thinking of, but your comment happened to remind me of our conversation)
Pretty sad. I have enjoyed using Scoopon for the past few months and I'm disappointed by their behavior here. Though I'm not justifying their behavior with this statement, it's understandable that 300k isn't biting. I have no doubt that they'll be much happier with you out as long as possible.
Another competitor, and one I've been even more impressed by, is ourdeal.com.au. You've definitely got some competition here. Good luck!
Really, I was able to click on the cudo logo and it redirected me to today's deal in sydney at http://cudo.com.au/sydney . I guess you can try entering other cities names and it should redirect to deals in those cities. This is very similar to Groupon (and infact a tad easier)
So, maybe the name doesn't matter so much as long as it's distinct per-market? It's happened long before the internet and probably has nothing to do with trademarks, and more to do with local marketing.
Case in point: "groupon" wouldn't work as well here in AU because "coupons" aren't a big thing. (The concept maybe, the word, no).
It's much more than just the domain name in this case, but also trademark and registered business name. Basically Groupon might not be able to operate as "Groupon" in Australia, regardless whichever domain name it uses.
Australians are pretty apt to type <business>.com.au - it'd be a risky trading environment when that address belonged to one of your competitors and seemed legitimate.
Apt to type .com.au - Really? As a red-blooded Australian I can't recall the last time I typed .com.au. Sometimes I look at it as an indicator for e-commerce purposes, but it doesn't count for much, at least to me.
I completely agree. I dont think not having com.au domain is that big a bottleneck. I would think that even grouponaustralia.com can work very well. Groupon already is geo targeting based on ip, so should not be that hard for them to get Australian market under way.
From Andrew's Mixergy interview, http://mixergy.com/andrew-mason-groupon-interview/ -
Talking in regards to the original British owner of Groupon: "...We’re doing something somewhat similar to that in the United States, so, maybe we can work together on this. We can take this to Europe.’ He said, ‘No way.’ We said, ‘Okay. ‘We continued operating. Then we had a trademark for Groupon. That trademark extended to England. We contact him and say, ‘Hey, you can launch that thing, but you can’t use the name Groupon because we have a trademark on it.’ So then, he decided he wanted to sell. I think we bought it in May 2009 or something like that for maybe $250,000, which seemed like a lot at the time and now it seems cheap."