WowWhatSavings.com Goes Following AOL’s Wow.com in Lawsuit
Site owner states AOL’s wow.com is confusing his users.
Late last year AOL converted its WOW.com domain name from a World of Warcraft site to a daily deals site similar to Groupon. Now the owner of daily deals site WowWhatSavings.com is crying foul in a lawsuit (pdf).
WowWhatSavings.com owner Todd Rideman states his deals site has been known as “WoW” to its users. Once AOL launched Wow.com, confusion ensued. He provides an affidavit from a Boston restaurant that stated it was confused when approached by Wow.com regarding placing a coupon, and that some of his users mistakenly thought offers on Wow.com were actually from his web site.
Although this alone may be a stretch, Rideman states he was introduced to a Patch.com employee (a subsidiary of AOL) who he told regarding his site ahead of AOL launched Wow.com. He alleges that the AOL employee stated he would “talk to his AOL bosses” regarding possibly working with WowWhatSavings.com.
If this were some AOL executive then this may be a “gotcha”. Or if WowWhatSavings.com was a unique idea it might also be a compelling case. But the AOL employee is just a regional publisher for Patch.com. And let’s face it, WowWhatSavings.com is not an original idea.
Sounds like a long shot to me.
(Hat tip: George Kirikos)
