That headline is the good news. The bad news is the $61 million in damages ordered by a French court isn’t meant for regular shoppers who have been defrauded when shopping on eBay. Instead, it’s been awarded to LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the French luxury goods company behind Louis Vuitton purses (among other fancy things, as you can see from their name). LVMH argued that “90 percent of the Louis Vuitton bags and Dior perfumes sold on eBay are fakes,” and that eBay profited off the sales without doing enough to stop them. EBay can appeal the decision, or simply click the “Pay It Now!” button.
EBay has countered that LVMH’s lawsuit has nothing to do with counterfeiters, but rather that LVMH is trying to control “the territories in which its products can be sold.”
“When counterfeits appear on our site we take them down swiftly, and today’s ruling is not about our fight against counterfeiting,” eBay said. “It’s about an attempt by LVMH to protect uncompetitive commercial practices at the expense of consumer choice and the livelihood of law-abiding sellers that eBay empowers every day. We will fight this ruling on their behalf.”
“EBay Ordered to Pay $61 Million in Sale of Counterfeit Goods” [New York Times]
(Photo: MoonSoleil)
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What I think alot of people are not getting is that the brands in question have certain distrubtion rights with various stores and has not authorized eBay or its sellers as proper distubuters. A part of the court order was to inform eBay to stop selling Dior perfumes.
Now obviously I don’t think used products apply here (though who sells used perfume) and eBay is probably hurting their lucrative deals with existing retailers. I’m doubtful eBay would have listened to requests that only authorized dealers can sell Dior perfumes or use that Trademark to sell a perfume and thus they lost the case.
@rellog: Sorry I was being over zealous in my sarcasm. I don’t actually care. Just been a long day at work.
kepler11 at 09:41 AM Reply *
maybe Ebay can just pull out of France.
@kepler11:
Maybe France should take Yaz?
@WarOtter: Policing? how about ignoring when brought to their attention? consistently? no one is asking them to police, just do something about it when the community sees the problem.
Block every French user. We’ll see who cries the most then..
I’m with Ebay on this one. I’ve bought a few LV items off of ebay and they were all real. LVMH just doesn’t like the secondary market. Ebayers can spot fakes and turn them in. I just bought two new bags from LV in Saks, but if they try to enforce not allowing people to sell their used LV stuff on Ebay, then I will not buy anything from them again. And that means Sephora too, shit. Not that I would try to sell any of my stuff on Ebay, they won’t protect you when a buyer rips you off, in fact, I think the way Ebay and PayPal are set up they encourage it. Damn, I’m boycotting so many companies for various reasons I have nothing left but Dr. Pepper, they’re still cool right?
@peter_in_paris: Interesting. It is odd to think someone can get their bag confiscated if they purposely bought a knockoff because they didn’t want to pay for the real thing. It would appear France just is a country not worth doing business with. Ebay should just block any LV auctions from french ips. Problem solved. These auctions will no longer have anything to do with France.
No it is not true that Ebay tries to cut down on the counterfeit – and a good example is Louis Vuitton merchandise. Several people who love Louis Vuitton handbags religiously search the listings and report all counterfeits. Rarely are they removed. The people – all volunteers who do this are quite good at what they do and quite diligent. Ebay has been ignoring them for quite a long time. They won’t even allow people to warn a buyer that what they are buying is counterfeit. The problem is that now with Super Fakes – the counterfeit ones are identical in every way to the real ones – materials used, stitching, date codes, proper alignment of monogram. Not a lot of those have seen the resale market yet and most of those came out this year, but wait a bit, they will be all you will see on aucton sites. And these super fakes bring as much money on online sales on auction sites as the real thing.
Ebay was much too lax with just this one item and that one was policed by Ebay users, not Ebay but Ebay did nothing. And even after the announcement of the law suit final determination, there are still fakes there.
That’s like fining the Post Office for allowing shipping of counterfeit items.
PS I hate Ebay.