Why Groupon is not in Australia (domain squatter)

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."

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]

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.

I'm assuming that any Groupon clones would be able to sell to businesses just as well as the real Groupon.

auDA have a very clear stance against this kind of squatting (from http://www.auda.org.au/policies/auda-2010-05/);

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.

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.

Edit: Have you read Nopuorg's About page? It's ridiculous http://www.nopuorg.com/about

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.

Am I the only one that thinks it's a lame joke?

Quote: "and this was after you did the same thing to some poor guy in england."

Another competitor, and one I've been even more impressed by, is ourdeal.com.au. You've definitely got some competition here. Good luck!

http://cudo.com.au/ConfirmUser

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).