Today, Tiffany & Co. announced that it is appealing the July 14, 2008 decision by a U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York that ruled eBay acted reasonably and responsibly to identify and expose the sale of counterfeit goods on the site.
Tiffany announced its intention to appeal the court’s ruling despite the court’s findings stating: “The burden of policing the Tiffany mark appropriately rests with Tiffany.”
In response, eBay had the following to say:
“Tiffany’s decision to carry this litigation on after the District Court’s decision doesn’t do anything to combat counterfeiting. The best way to stop counterfeiting is on-going collaboration between companies, government agencies and law enforcement.”
In its July decision, the court had said:
“Tiffany has failed to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that eBay deliberately ignored counterfeiting activity of which it was aware. Rather, the evidence establishes that when eBay had general knowledge of counterfeiting on its website, it took reasonable steps to investigate and stop that wrongdoing through general anti-fraud measures. Indeed, eBay has invested significant financial, technological, and personnel resources in developing tools to ferret out and eliminate counterfeit goods from its website.”
It was my opinion that the court’s ruling landed in favor of the eBay user last month – both buyer and seller. I hope this stands and remains to be the case.
Cheers,
RBH