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eBay, Enemy of Trademark, says Tiffany®
Posted by Rebecca Bolin on Tuesday, June 22 @ 12:51:10 EDT Trademark
Tiffany® is suing eBay for aiding trademark infringement. Tiffany® claims 73% of "Tiffany" jewelry sold on eBay last year was counterfeit and asks for profits eBay made off counterfeit products or a lump sum per type.

Do we really want eBay to have to be an inspector of everything it helps to sell? Responsibility for infrigement (and most profit from it) is on the individual sellers primarily, and the case is clear against them. eBay's responsibility must be based on some theory of negligence, but it seems the duty of inspection is best delegated to the buyer, who is well aware of the risks of buying on eBay. Should eBay be able to pick out all fakes? Or just really bad ones?

Update: This article is a good analysis of the controversey.

Tiffany® is a registered trademark of Tiffany and Co., New York.

 
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Re: eBay, Enemy of Trademark, says Tiffany® (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Wednesday, June 23 @ 10:59:54 EDT
I, too, don't understand exactly what Tiffany expects eBay to do... become experts in distinguishing real Tiffany items from fake ones based on the brief descriptions and small pictures posted to eBay, or ban all auctions of Tiffany items real or fake despite there being nothing illegal about the sale of real ones? And if the "solution" is to ban all such auctions, would this end up being done by a crude keyword-based blockage that might suppress auctions of CDs by the '80s teen singer Tiffany as well? Multiply this by the many other companies out there which would follow Tiffany's lead in demanding such compliance from eBay, and you'd have a nightmarish policing problem for eBay and a large amount of collateral damage in perfectly legitimate sales being blocked.

This seems like just another example of IP owners demanding an unreasonable degree of compliance on the part of innocent parties in helping them protect their "property".


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