BNXS

The giant deals company Groupon is fuming with rage over its cloning. A blog post on the company’s blog announced that it has filed a lawsuit against Scoopon a clone in Australia. Scoopon is currently using the domain name of Groupon.com.au so in the meantime Groupon is operating as Stardeals in Australia. The case will be heard in an Australian court on February 4^th. Andrew Mason the Groupon CEO says that they have faced frustration by the clone company. While there has been a proliferation of Groupon clones around the world, Scoopon has gone to the extent of purchasing the Groupon.com.au domain name as stated earlier. Over and above this they have also taken the Groupon Pty Limited name and made a go at registering the Groupon trademark just a week before Groupon (the real one) filed for the trademark itself. Mason went onto explain that in the wake of Groupon’s success many opportunists from around the world have started buying local Groupon domain names with the intention of forcing Groupon to buy them. Apparently they did make that move and offered to buy the two brothers who own Scoopon some $286,000 for the domain name and the trademark. The offer had been accepted at first then rejected when the owners probably realized that they could make more money if they could sell the whole Scoopon to Groupon. The only option left was to go to the courts.