[dealaggLATAM]

Hi,

I work with a deal aggregator in Latin America, mainly in Argentina. We have received calls from lawyers and employees from Groupon telling us to stop publishing deals from Groupon because they will start legal actions. However, we have spoken with lawyers and they told us that there is nothing wrong with publishing public information from other sites, since we treat every deal site in the same way. Groupon alleges wrong and inadequate use of their brand and orders us to remove, logos, deals and anything related to them.
What do you think about this? Is what Groupon ask defended by law?
Would like to hear your comments.

Thanks!

[CTanK]

Hi, I run the US/Canada Groupon affiliate program, and we are separate from that in Latin America, but I know that in order to use our API, you have to agree to specific terms...which include:

Branding Requirements
Terms of Use

As I have no insight into the Latin American program, I would suggest that you doublecheck the terms that you might have agreed to if you are pulling/scraping content?

[dealaggLATAM]

Ok, thanks for the answer. But, is it illegal to publish public information?

[dealaggLATAM]

Ctank, one more thing. I see in your branding requirements in the US the following requirement:

-Give Us the Spotlight
Don’t aggregate our deals with other providers.

However, in the US, there are dozens of aggregators that show Groupon deals. Why could this be?

Thanks

[CTanK]

We have a pretty strict definition of aggregators...they only show local daily deals and nothing else. No coupons, no travel deals, just simply daily deals by city. There are some aggregators that we are currently working with to get them in compliance, we're helping them build out content, or add other features. There are also several other that have been booted, or are in the process of being removed from our program.

My suggestion might be to work with your LATM counterpart and see what you could do to partner with them, as opposed to going down this legal channel?

[dealaggLATAM]

Our site only aggregates daily deal sites. However in Latam, Groupon is not willing to allow publishing their discounts by any way. We have already talked to them an offer different privileges. They say it is non negotiable. We respect their decission. But my doubt is legal.
Is it forbidden by law to publish public information?
Obviously we beleive that we promote Groupon and we want the best for them and we treat them in the same way as other daily deal sites.

[bibby]

I'm not sure if their info is public or not and what laws there are in Argentina and other Latin/South American countries but you do need permission to reproduce/copy copyrighted information and trademarks like logos and other information.

[dealaggLATAM]

What you say is correct. You cannot reproduce copyright information and trademarks like logos. However, I see them everywhere. For example, if I put microsoft in google images I see a lot of logos.
However, what you say could be right and perhaps an internet lawyer could answer this better.
But what about the title of a deal? That has no copyright. Indeed it is impossible to copyright a title (since their is nothing original on it). Well I do not care if it is impossible or not, but I beleive that no daily deal company fills out a patent on a title. And I beleive that information is public, since you have no access fee and anybody can see the daily deals (not referring to some deals that are not public and only some people can see them). Then why is it illegal?
Just discussing and like very much to hear your opinions!

[Convergence]

If you take content from a website without it's permission, and you were told to stop, what you are doing is illegal.

You keep asking the question over and over in hopes of someone telling you what you want to hear - but the answers are not going to change.

If you don't think what you are doing is wrong - keep doing it. I'm sure Groupon would have no problem taking care of you with very little effort. Why? Because they can.

My company just took down six, out of the country based, websites that were infringing on our intellectual property rights. All within one week. No patents. No trademarks...

[dealaggLATAM]

Convergence,

I am not looking for what I want to hear (however I do not want to argue about that). If you think I am doing that, I am sorry. I just want to give my opinion, looking for an answer to this issue to avoid legal trouble.
An answer like yours is really helpful for me and it is what I am looking for. Obviously, I would have prefer a possitive answer.
What I see is that every deal aggregator in the world publishes Groupon's daily deals, indeed perhaps we are now the only daily deal aggregator that does not do that, in the world.
Which is your company? What do you do? Can you give me some examples of the six companies you mention? This is really important and helpful for us.
Thanks!

[Convergence]

Originally Posted by dealaggLATAM

Convergence,
...
Which is your company? What do you do? Can you give me some examples of the six companies you mention? This is really important and helpful for us.
Thanks!

My company does a few things from our own PPC Ad Network, web hosting, domain name registrations, few vertical search engines, niche turnkey ecommerce drop ship websites, and affiliate marketing - to name a few.

No need to give the name of the websites that were infringing on our intellectual property - they were all out of Asia. We used C&D correspondence, brought their infringements to the attention of their hosting companies, domain registrars (incomplete/inaccurate registrations), the FTC, and have DMCA letters mailed to the Google, Yahoo!, and Bing where the pages indexed will be either removed or sent to the bottom of the SERPs not to be found. It's that simple.