Another Parallel Luxury Brand Lawsuit against eBay, in the US This Time {Fragrance News}

eBay has come under fire from luxury group LVMH and lost recent lawsuits against the giant of the good life see previous posts: eBay Risks Paying 80 Million Dollars in Damages; LVMH and eBay Saga Continues; French Justice System Tightening Its Grip on eBay. Now Tiffany in the US has been attempting to have its brand protected by launching a similar attack on eBay and just lost its case per a federal decision emanating from a Manhattan court.

"The decision, entered by Judge Richard Sullivan at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Monday, said that it is the trademark owner's burden to police its mark. Tiffany, the ruling said, failed in its burden to prove claims that eBay was liable for trademark infringement and dilution, false advertising and unfair competition for facilitating the sale of counterfeit goods."...

eBay is arguing that it cannot be held responsible for illegal transactions of counterfeit goods because they are never the owners of the counterfeit goods but merely a space of exchange. However, they do derive profits from illegal sales; they also do have a policing system on their site geared in principle towards customers' and sellers' satisfaction and protection, otherwise the system would be chaos. It is a well-known fact among vintage perfume collectors for example that certain sellers continue their counterfeit businesses under different user names once they have been caught. This type of practice seems to point to an inadequacy in the policing regulations applied on eBay. eBay owns Paypal and sometimes their responses to financial claims is adequate, at other times, visibly lax. Many customers will probably have resorted to a philosophical attitude whereby buying on eBay is a little like playing at the lottery at times.

So if policing rules exist on eBay, they seem just not finely tuned enough apparently to prohibit sales of an untoward nature and the follow-ups are not always efficient. In conclusion, if you want to sell either your fake or real grandma on eBay, just try and see what happens! If no one in the family protests, she is probably going to go for a good price!

Via WWD