Pity for the posers: no more fake handbags on eBay

Written on June 30, 2008 – 3:53 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Everybody who has visited a popular tourist spot recently, knows the market stands with fake handbags, shirts and sun glasses. These poor-quality goods come straight from countries like China and Vietnam and are widely popular by people who adore the celebrity cult. It seems like these markets will be the only place where you can buy the fake stuff, as a court in France has ordered eBay to compensate fashion and new luxury empire LVMH for allowing the sale of these infamous counterfeit goods. The damage for eBay? €38.6 million.

LVMH - known from Louis Vuitton, Moët et Chandon, Tag Heuer, Fendi, and many more - claims that the French division of eBay doesn’t try hard enough to prevent the shabby salesmen from using the auction site as their market stand. This allegedly caused damage of about €50 million for LVMH.

A month ago, another French court ordered eBay to pay Hermes 20,000 euros for allowing the sale of fakes. I wonder whether these two court-rulings have scared eBay enough to stop opening its doors for the posers’ suppliers.

Update July 1st: eBay will appeal the French court ruling in this LVMH dispute

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business, ebay, fake, france, Louis Vuitton, LVMH, Moët et Chandon, Tag Heuer

About the author: Ernst-Jan is blogger and co-organizer of BLOG08, who previously worked in New York to cover news at the United Nations. Next to writing, he's also a singer in the band Christina Five. Follow him on Twitter or read his personal blog Dutchproblogger.com .

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One comment to “Pity for the posers: no more fake handbags on eBay”

By pity for the internet also on Jun 30, 2008

Unfortunately this kind of legislation is also bad for the net itself.
These kind of rulings are always good arguments for people trying to get rid of net neutrality (via “strict liability in tort”).

Just try to balance “strict liability in tort” and free open access to the internet via “internet sharing” projects with mesh routing.

same problem.
in the ebay case it’s also very bad for enterpreneurs.

[Reply]

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