The Antique Marks Blog

For the first time eBay have been held responsible for the items sold on its websites.

A FRENCH court has ruled that eBay are directly responsible for what is sold on their website and has ordered ebay to pay $30,000 to luxury goods designer Hermes for the their role in the sale of three counterfeit handbags.

The French judge found eBay directly accountable for the sale of counterfeit items by one of its customers. eBay maintains that it removes listings found to be fraudulent and argues that the liability for those listings is on the seller.

“By selling Hermes bags and branded accessories on the eBay.fr site, and by failing to act within their powers to prevent reprehensible use of the site,” the seller and eBay “committed acts of counterfeiting and imitation of French brand names … to the detriment of Hermes international,” the ruling said.

eBay has said that its Verified Rights Owner Program (VeRO) is in place to make it easy for intellectual property owners to report abuse. The company has stated that the “court ruling relates to past issues of seller verification.”

“The court acknowledged that eBay has closed these loopholes referencing the anti-counterfeiting measures spearheaded by the VeRO scheme which brings rights owners and eBay together to tackle the menace of counterfeit goods.”

eBay was ordered to pay the fine jointly with the seller who put the bags up for sale. eBay was also ordered to post the ruling on its French homepage for three months. Other designer brands have cases pending against eBay for sales of counterfeit goods including Louis Vuitton, Dior Couture, and L’Oreal.

The Court ruling supports the luxury goods firms and will challenge the framework on which eBay have built a multi-billion pound business. Legal decisions forcing eBay to vet goods prior to being uploaded could prove a serious threat to their operation, which process millions of items for sale each day.

After their anouncement on 15th April of the death of eBay live auctions, no high street auction house will be able to offer their catalogues to eBays 200-million plus audience after December 31 2008.

For several years, eBay have worked with a small number of independent auction providers including Artfact, icollector and LiveAuctioneers who then work with traditional auction houses to supply goods for eBay Live Auctions. eBay also allowed companies such as GoAntiques to run virtual auctions with no auction room sales associated with them.

But, unlike those that buy into the ebay audience, there are many auction houses that use the internet in there own way, to attract interest from around the world.

Take Bellmans of Billingshurst, West Sussex who held an antiques sale on March 26-28.

“The sale was viewed on our website by nearly 9000 people in 45 different countries around the world, with bids from India, China and New Zealand.”

The highest price in the auction was paid for a pair of late 19th century Scottish satinwood cabinets – which belonged to the family of Sir Donald Currie, the famous founder of the Union-Castle Shipping Line and MP for Perthshire. They fetched £6,900*

So, unlike those auctioneers and businesses who spent the last five years building ebay’s equity and who built a dependence on ebay’s good will; the traditional auctioneers who moved with the times and invested in their own web presence are seeing good returns on that investment.

For those that have yet to do so they would do well to read how you can build a web presence that works

Oh! and Bellmans next sale will take place on April 23, 24 and 25 – for further information, call 01403 700858, or visit www.bellmans.co.uk.