eBay Wins Legal Victory Over Tiffany
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Ebay, the online auction site, has won an important legal victory over Tiffany, which sued it over the sale of counterfeit goods.
Following a four-year court action by the jeweler, a New York judge ruled that luxury goods manufacturers must police their trademarks on the Internet and not rely on auctions sites to do it for them.
The ruling marks the first legal victory for eBay, a California-based company which has had a series of European judgments go against it.
Most recently, on June 30, a French court decided that it must pay $63.9 million in damages to Louis Vuitton after the company claimed it was being hurt by the sale of fake bags, perfume, and clothes. The company is appealing. In April, a German court ruled that eBay had to act to stop fake Rolex watches being sold on the site.
U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan said in his ruling yesterday that eBay could not be held liable for trademark infringement “based solely on their generalized knowledge that trademark infringement might be occurring on their Web sites.”
The judge was responding to a lawsuit in which the New York-based jeweler claimed that most items listed on eBay as genuine Tiffany products were fakes.
