Richard Ambrose, Head of Trust & Safety, eBay said:
"This is an important judgment because it ensures that consumers can continue to buy genuine products at competitive prices on eBay. As such, it is a victory for consumers and the thousands of
entrepreneurs who sell legitimate goods on eBay every day.
"When companies try to prevent genuine items being sold through the internet they demonstrate that they are out of step with consumers, how they use the internet to shop and, at this time when
every penny counts, the importance of shopping around to get the best price.
"Furthermore, following legal victories for eBay in the UK, US, France and Belgium we reiterate again that cooperation and dialogue is what is needed, not litigation. Only by working together can
we collectively address the issues that concern eBay, rights owners and consumers.”
Next month eBay in Europe will launch an online petition to try to amend EU competition law to remove barriers to trade. The High Court ruled in favour of eBay on all counts and has also referred a number of items to the European Court of Justice for clarification and confirmation. eBay welcomes this move as we hope that it will help to inform the debate on the sale of goods on the internet – something that the European Commission is already addressing with the drafting of new guidelines on the extent to which companies can restrict online trade. L’Oreal argued that restricting the distribution of their products and preventing them from being sold on eBay protected consumers against counterfeit products. In court, of the 15 products hand-selected by L’Oreal as evidence against eBay UK, not a single one was proven to be counterfeit. In 2008, eBay hosted 2.7 billion listings globally, only 0.15% of them were identified as potentially counterfeit. eBay works in partnership with over 31,000 rights owners to help ensure that only genuine products are available for sale on our site. This week eBay.co.uk launched a campaign to recruit even more members to this partnership programme. Last week a court in France found in favour of eBay and recognised eBay’s meaningful efforts to fight counterfeits online. Today’s ruling, along with similar judgements in France, the US, Germany and Belgium reinforces that eBay is a safe and trusted place to shop.