eBay is clearly in the right here? Think of the precedent Tiffany are setting just to save themselves a little trouble!

"US Government ordered to be more proactive finding Terrorists" and suddenly everyone's being hauled out of their car if they look even slightly shifty!

Or a government could introduce some sort of ridiculous legislation to protect children from another failed governmental "rehabillitation of criminals" system... Oh, wait. That's in the El Reg headlines today as well...

Anyway, eBay have always maintained this policy and given the huge number of auctions they do pull down it looks like they're sticking to it.

I wonder what would happen if it was a "Rolex Replica" or "Designed to look like a Rolex"? Surely Rolex couldn't do anything about that?

This decision is wholly irrelevant to Viacom vs YouTube.

TM != (C)

For once, I'm glad eBay won something. The judge must have been competent. This case should have been common sense for two reasons:

-Trademark owners must defend their trademark.

-Content posted by users on websites is the responsibility of the users.

I can see why everyone is siding with eBay on this. It seems stupid by any real means to investigate every auction put up. As Neoc said how would landlords be responsible for what the shop on their land was selling?

But it must be kept in mind that rather then thinking that this whole 'people sell fake/ripoffs of trademarked goods is bad and unfortunate', they don't actually give a crap, much like Youtube, great though it is its basically making money off of peoples willingness to break the law and piss all over trademark and copyright laws. Not saying a good deal of both of those don't deserve pissing over but then maybe some people in a position of power and distribution should give a shit about crime rather then how much money that crime brings them.

And not because I think copyright laws and trademark laws are good and just and should be upheld just because if your hiding behind the law, and at the same time benefiting from crime your hiding from then you should be removed from your position.

To me the fix for this is so friggin obvious its stupid...

Certain Brand names can only be used in a sale if a serial number (authenticity Number) is presented with the sale (not published), These Numbers get automatically sent to the Brand Name Owner who can verify if the Numbers are Legitimate, and if that 'item' has been traded too many times, ie copies have the same serial number, If so the Brand name owner requests ebay remove said item.

Easy Solution.

Under UK law at least, Auctioneers were responsible for ensuring that goods sold through thair auction houses were accurately described, which is why the likes of Sotheby’s have a staff of well paid experts on hand.

Over this side of the Pond, Trading Standards Officers are publicly funded. Market halls are not obliged to police their franchises for dodgy knockoffs, nor are they liable for infringements of any law by the traders who rent space from them.

Do we really want our Governments pouring torrents of cash into actively policing eBay for TM infringements? Or would we rather they acted on information?

Quite why all the major companies don't hire someone in their company to scan the Internet and daily hunt for counterfeit goods being sold. Not as if there is a huge number of auction sites.

There are thousands of dodgy goods on sale on eBay all damaging their brand names, so you'd think they'd do something about it.

If they got themselves together with eBay and made an agreement to be able to contact eBay quickly to get dodgy goods withdrawn then we'd see much less crap on offer.

I tried to buy a microphone last week and the huge amounts of counterfeit Sony goods on open sale was amazing.

True enough - eBay is the the 21st century equivalent of the Glasgow Barra Lands.

Good analogy; I was just thinking of the car-boot-sale myself.

As ever, "caveat emptor".