U.K. Court Rules in Favor Of eBay in L’Oreal Fight

By Robin Wauters

The U.K. High Court Friday ruled in favor of eBay (EBAY), claiming that the company can’t be held legally accountable for the sale of counterfeit L’Oreal fragrances and creams on its online auction site in the U.K. The ruling follows similar decisions by Belgian and French courts, which have ruled in eBay’s favor in three of the five cases L’Oreal brought in 2007 against the company.

This is fantastic news for counterfeiters, who can now keep on duping customers into buying fake L’Oreal cosmetics through the popular web service.

In all seriousness, I think this is a logical ruling, in the sense that eBay is and has always been merely a facilitator of trade and can hardly be expected to verify the authenticity of each and every product that goes up for sale on its auction website. It has in the past taken a lot of steps to do its part in fighting online crime, and recent rulings in European courts fortunately reflect that.

In a statement, Richard Ambrose, Head of Trust & Safety for eBay, reiterated that “cooperation and dialogue is what is needed, not litigation”.

Hear, hear.

Original post

Comments

[Wake-Up!:]

Guess it's not who you know - but rather who you pay off...

May 22 09:21 AM

[PastTense:]

eBay has a Vero program so that companies can keep counterfeited material off the site. Some companies are very vigorous with this; others aren't (and lots of sellers have complained that legitimate products have been wrongly removed).
pages.ebay.com/help/tp...

May 22 12:26 PM

[Et tu, Brute!:]

Ebay simply does not care one way or the other whether a product is legitimate unless back into a corner. Then, like the animal it is, it comes out baring it's teeth.

Amazon, on the other hand, is the complete opposite and a site that cares whether the merchandise you sell IS legitimate.

May 22 04:18 PM

[Philip Cohen:]

“It has in the past taken a lot of steps to do its part in fighting online crime.” But only at the point of a gun. And, when then is eBay going to stop effectively “aiding and abetting” shill bidders to defraud buyers; this is something that eBay could easily do something about, and some Consumer Affairs regulator should point a gun at them and make them do it.
See case study at www.auctionbytes.com/f...

May 23 03:42 PM