eBay wins (again) against Tiffany
by Sue Bailey
Tiffany has failed in its latest bid to sue eBay over fake jewellery sold on its site. The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeal refused yesterday to overturn a lower court’s ruling that eBay has done all it is required to do in law to stop counterfeit items being sold.
eBay general counsel Michael R. Jacobson said “The ruling validates eBay’s leading efforts to fight counterfeiting … We continue to support cooperation, rather than litigation, as the best way to address these issues in everyone’s best interests.”
eBay removes suspect items once reported by trademark owners via its VeRO program. In the long-running case, Tiffany has argued that this is an inadequate response and that eBay itself, not the trademark owner, should be doing more to verify the genuine nature of goods sold via the site.
Tiffany’s chairman and CEO Michael J. Kowalski said: “eBay deliberately misled consumers for profit, and unfortunately, the court has justified its actions. The consumer is the real loser today.” The company is now considering an appeal to the US Supreme Court.
9 Responses on "eBay wins (again) against Tiffany"
Related Posts:
- Tiffany to appeal eBay fakes ruling
- eBay win Tiffany court case
- News in briefs
- “Uneconomical” to sue fakes’ sellers, says Tiffany CEO
- eBay’s counterfeit fight with Ratatouille’s Remy
Recent Posts
- SM, SMP and Mark Down Manager glitch
- Moocho – SoLoMo payments startup
- 36% of SME use Facebook, 60% are digital dinosaurs
- 35% off with PayPal at Domino’s Pizza voucher code
- Do you want national TV exposure for your business?
Shame
I’m with Tiffany on this one.
Ebay’s policy and that of some of the vero owners is uneven.
Many listings are brazenly selling counterfeit items and should be shut down immediately, the fact is ebay is slow to react and does not pro-actively do anything, relying entirely on vero complaints or ebay community watch.
On the other hand some vero owners abuse the system and shut down legitimate goods from being sold or items which although not the branded goods are legitamately compared to them.
Ebay will generally acquiesce with illegitimate complaints from vero owners and community watch.
In many cases it is patently clear who is selling counterfeit goods and the main culprits are chinese sellers. As there are factories quite openly making this stuff and wholesalers in there thousands selling it, that is no surprise.
There are many sellers who cannot resist the temptation and import the counterfeit goods to sell on ebay. They take more of a risk, although the main risk is just having their listings deleted every now and again.
Fake branded goods make my non-branded goods seem unatractive as they sell at a similar price. Quite often though they are of poorer quality as not only are they fakes but they are not even made from the genuine materials.
So on balance I think ebay are getting away with it here, and should take more responsibility. Of course being responsible does not necessarily help ebay reap financial rewards.
Possibly sales of all precious metal jewellery from overseas sellers (who are directly listing on the co.uk site) should be stopped as it is highly unlikely that the goods on offer comply with UK hallmarking regulations.
its highly unlikely that sales precious metal jewellery from many UK sellers on the co.uk site comply with UK hallmarking regulations.
Your right there but at least (in theory) in the case of UK sellers it can be taken up with trading standards.
ebays message on this is a bit confusing when it states that all gold silver etc must be hallmarked there are large sections and types of jewellery that are exempt from hallmarking
I think you will find that the main omission in ebays guidelines is the fact that items below a certain weight do not legally require hallmarking Viz. 7.78 grams in silver and 1 gram in gold.
I think it is mainly chinese sellers who sell items as sterling silver but pass of plated ware instead. However there are many in the UK who advertise there wares as ‘silver’ both in title and description who are infact selling plated wares. They seem to think that if they don’t describe their item as ‘sterling silver’ they are in the clear. The fact is, it is against the law to sell metal as silver unless it meets the minimum legal standard which in the UK and EU is 800 parts per thousand, and for sterling silver 925 parts per thousand.
It is only permissable to describe these non silver metals as silver coloured base metal, Silver plated or electroplated silver. In the States they use the term ‘silver tone’ which is clear to them although not necessarily to UK customers.
Trading standards do not have the staff (and the expertise) to deal with the scale of the breaches on the internet and ebay in particular. Ebay simply think by putting warnings on the listing forms they have done enough.
The historically high price of precious metals at the moment is fueling the market for silver plated alternatives to silver and many sellers know they can get away with deciet as the buyers intially may think they have bought a bargain until the lick of plated silver wears off to brass.
All this will just add to the suspicion with buyers that ebay is just an unregulated den of thieves.
At the moment, Amazon are much tighter although I have noticed some pretty sloppy practice there as well.
Most definitely the easiest way to clean up the fine Jewellery section and to make it a more attractive shopping destination would be to stop overseas seller listing New jewellery items, made from precious metals, on the .co.uk site.
Selling un-hallmarked new jewellery, which is above the exemption weight, is against the law (in the UK). Why does eBay allow this to go on?
I think the main fault in ebays warning is the fact that most items pre 1950, many things pre 1970, and just about everything pre 1920, do not qualify for the hallmarking regulations,