Ebay fined £30 million for allowing fakes to be sold

caoimhemo

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30400-1320396,00.html

Can see big changes on ebay in the future
Better for buyers though:D

311

30 Million is a fair chunk for ebay ,I doubt they'll pay all that.

Nody

Would be very surprised if they don't challenge that to a higher court (French courts are known to take extreme stances). At the end of the day though how are they suppose to be able to be aware if an item is false or not? That is like fining a ISP because someone downloaded a pirated movie or fining a truck maker because their truck was used to carry fakes.

jor el

They are appealing it. I heard a comment from eBay that claimed this was nothing more than Vuitton's "desire to protect commercial practices that exclude all competition". Well duh, of course they're trying to protect themselves from counterfeit competition.

eBay say they remove counterfeit items as soon as they can, which is not quite true from what I see. They do sometimes remove auctions, but it's rare to ban a seller and remove all their auction due to selling counterfeit. I would imagine that's where the lawsuit stems out of.

ruprect

Four perfume brands - Dior, Guerlain, Kenzo and Givenchy - sued for what they called "illicit sales" of their products.

They alleged that even auctions involving their legitimate perfumes were illegal, because only specialist dealers were permitted to sell them.

This is a point I always wondered about. Ever see all the legal stuff you get on some DVDs, resale is illegal, hiring, lending, playing on oil rigs etc.

Seems they have covered themselves for all loopholes but do not enforce them. If everybody on ebay started selling fake playstation games then Sony might be able to just say all sales are illegal.

A council representing the auction industry also accuses the Internet trader of breaking a French law that requires all auctioneers to be approved by the state.