The world's largest daily deals website, Groupon, which Google tried to buy this month for $US6 billion, has confirmed it is entering the Australian market.

      The company is recruiting people to sign up to its email database before a launch next month into a market that is becoming crowded. The No. 2 player, Living Social, abandoned plans to start from scratch in Australia, opting instead for a joint venture with an existing company, Jumponit.
      But because an existing Australian deals company has had its application to use the Groupon name in Australia approved, the Chicago company has been forced to use the domain name of Stardeals in Australia.

      Groupon has engaged the lawyers Clayton Utz to take action against Scoopon, a Victorian company that has been offering online deals on products and services in Australian cities for more than four years.

      Groupon lodged an intellectual property action in the Federal Court in Victoria in August and is due to go for mediation on January 21 or, failing that, to the courts on February 4.

      Groupon is also taking Scoopon to court in its home state of Illinois, claiming federal trademark infringement, unfair competition and deceptive trade practices, even though Scoopon's business is limited to Australian shores.

      Daily deal websites offer discounts from local retailers, merchants and leisure operators, thereby restricting their operations to local businesses and consumers.

      A Groupon spokeswoman, Julie Mossler, said: "The [Stardeals] site is live to accept subscribers but we are not yet offering deals at this time. We hope to be doing so within the next month."

      An intellectual property lawyer, Trevor Choy, said Groupon was paying the price for its failure to register its trademark or name as it expanded globally. The US case was doomed to fail, he said. "Groupon's lawyers should have known that US trademarks can't be enforced outside of the US against a company that does no business there."

Source from The Sydney Morning Herald