Ebay Fined $61M By French Court For Sales of Fake Goods

A court in France ordered eBay to pay more than 61 mega-dollars to the parent company (LVMH) of Givenchy, Fendi, Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton, because a user sold fake goods on the website. eBay has been sued by other 'luxury goods' vendors (such as Tiffany's (US), Rolex (Germany) and L'Oreal (EU)). Problems stem from some companies demanding that their merchandise (even legal merchandise) not be displayed nor sold as it is a violation of their 'property.' Others have complained that eBay is too slow to take down claims. Apparently eBay was hit with two violations: 1) eBay illegally allowed legitimately purchased and owned products made by LVMH to be resold on its website by 3rd parties not under the control of LVMH, and 2) not doing enough to protect LVMH's brands from illegal sales. eBay has said it will appeal. So eBay is to know what products every company allows to be sold before allowing them to on auction?

(There's also coverage at Yahoo News.)

Update: 07/01 17:15 GMT by T : That's LVMH throughout, rather than LVHM, as originally rendered.

Comments

Received from eBay yesterday, revised terms!

[ciscoguy01]

Received from eBay yesterday, revised user agreement and privacy policy terms. What a coincidence!

Received: Jun-30-08
Changes to the eBay User Agreement and Privacy Policy

I'm writing to let you know that the eBay User Agreement and eBay Privacy Policy have been updated, effective immediately for new users and on August 13, 2008, for current users.

The most important thing to keep in mind about this update is that your rights, and our responsibilities, under the User Agreement and Privacy Policy have changed very little. This update was spurred by an international project, rolling out now, that will make the user agreements and privacy policies for eBay platforms around the world much more consistent. This way, when you interact with any eBay platform around the world, you can be sure that very similar policies apply to you no matter where you do your transactions.

There is one substantive change to our User Agreement I'd like to point out. We changed the "Content" and "Liability" sections to accommodate a new program we're rolling out worldwide. That program makes catalogs of content and product descriptions available to sellers, so they can easily include complete and up-to-date product information for the items they list.

Similarly, we've revised the Privacy Policy's "Disclosure" section to make sure that the language we've used there accurately reflects the ways in which we're transferring information between companies in the eBay Inc. corporate family to streamline services, fight fraud and provide you with the best, most relevant experience when you use any of the sites or services of the eBay corporate family.

With these changes, we continue to make sure that our legal documents are consistent with the ways our sites and services are evolving and that we meet the needs of our user community. We hope you'll agree that these changes will make the eBay sites and services work better for you. If you accept the new User Agreement and Privacy Policy, you don't need to take any action. If you do not wish to accept the new User Agreement or Privacy Policy, please refer to our Help pages for instructions on how to close your account.

Thank you for using eBay and we look forward to many more successful transactions!

Sincerely,

Scott Shipman Senior Counsel -- Global Privacy Practices eBay Inc.

The important change is in the liability section:

Liability
You will not hold eBay responsible for other users' content, actions or inactions, or items they list. You acknowledge that we are not a traditional auctioneer. Instead, the sites are a venue to allow anyone to offer, sell, and buy just about anything, at anytime, from anywhere, in a variety of pricing formats and venues, such as stores, fixed price formats and auction-style formats. We are not involved in the actual transaction between buyers and sellers. We have no control over and do not guarantee the quality, safety or legality of items advertised, the truth or accuracy of users' content or listings, the ability of sellers to sell items, the ability of buyers to pay for items, or that a buyer or seller will actually complete a transaction.

We do not transfer legal ownership of items from the seller to the buyer, and nothing in this agreement shall modify the governing provisions of California Commercial Code 2401(2) and Uniform Commercial Code 2-401(2), under which legal ownership of an item is transferred upon physical delivery of the item to the buyer by the seller. Unless the buyer and the seller agree otherwise, the buyer will become the item's lawful owner upon physical receipt of the item from the seller, in accordance with California Commercial Code 2401(2) and Uniform Commercial Code 2-401(2). Further, we cannot guarantee continuous or secure access to our services, and operation of the sites may be interfered with by numerous factors outside of our control. According

Re:First sale?

[Lord Crowface]

Indeed they do. It's called "Exhaustion of Rights" and is an EU-wide legal doctrine. At least in Germany, interpretations of this have gone so far as to completely void the "no resale" clauses in licenses for products like AutoCAD and various OEM releases from M$, but I'm not sure if the French interpret it quite as broadly.

Here's the Wikipedia article, for what its worth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_of_rights

Re:Even by petty French standards, this is sad

[Palinchron]

The difference is that on the cases you mention, you aren't contractually bound; instead, you are bound by the law. The people producing and selling these items don't set these restrictions, the government does.