eBay convicted for selling fake Hermes goods

[liowkc]

eBay was recently convicted by a French court of selling fake goods and ordered to pay damages to Hermes. The court found eBay directly responsible for the sale on its website 3 Hermes bags including 2 fakes.

[liowkc]

In another related case, a Paris court has ordered eBay to pay 40 million euros in damages toi Louis Vuitton for selling fake luxury goods online. The commerical court also barred eBay from selling 4 perfume brands - Christian Dior, Kenzo, Givenchy and Guerlain.

[neena]

I've read about these issues many times but correct me if I am wrong, how is ebay directly responsible for its sellers? Is it possible for a site of such magnitude to know about each and every product thats listed on its site? They can have generic guidelines in place and aren't fakes sold everywhere around the world anyways ? There are thousands of websites selling fakes, why aren't they penalized?

[liowkc]

I am not taking sides but the argument against eBay would be that by providing a forum for sale, eBay ought to have practice due diligence and this duty of care towards the copyright owners ought to be of a high standard since eBay profits from the sales.

[Llamalord]

With millions of sales taking place a day I dont think that ebay staff have the man hours to check every single sale. Most of the time how are they to know if a item is real or fake. This is has nothing to do with ebay in the end, the charges should be passed onto the user who put the fake online.

[liowkc]

If you make money out of a sale, a legal duty of care is imposed on you to take reasonable precautions. Ebay is doing the selling and auctioning not as a charity but as a business, so it does have certain commercial obligations.

[Llamalord]

True, but as they dont old the items themselves its almost impossible for them to tell if some items are real and some fake, all someone needs to do is put:

REAL BAG! $300

when its just a cheap $20 knock off, how are ebay to know the difference even if they did check each and every auction

[liowkc]

I do not have the answer for that, but many things can go wrong through no fault of theirs and it is still their legal responsibility.

[Llamalord]

That is true, but then its their legal obligation to press charges against the seller

[neena]

I think when you have 24 hr channels with very little real news to showcase, everything suddenly becomes newsworthy, however stupid it might be. One should ask whoever comes with these kind of scoops, do they have nothing better to report ?