The daily deals website Living Social, which was founded as Hungry Machine Inc., is in a dispute over the domain name livingsocial.co.
The company filed a complaint (case # DCO2011-0041) this week with the World Intellectual Property Organization.
The domain name appears to have been purchased after the landrush period run by .CO Internet S.A.S. the registry operator, which started in late June 2010 and ended in mid July 2010, when prices of applications averaged anywhere between $250 to $300. Individuals and companies such as Facebook and IBM submitted applications during the landrush phase and domains that received more than one application were eventually auctioned and went to the highest bidder.
It seems Living Social wasn’t interested in livingsocial.co at the time.
The domain name was acquired by an individual in China when .CO domain names were first made available to the general public.
Livingsocial.co received nearly 2,000 unique visitors last month alone, according to a rough estimate by Compete and the domain is monetized using Google’s Adsense for Domains program.
Living Social’s rival Groupon owns groupon.co, however the web address doesn’t resolve to any of Groupon’s sites.
Over 40 cases involving .CO domain names have been filed with WIPO in 2011.