Dealing with Removed Listings on eBay Due to Intellectual Property Claims
Summary: christworks received a notice from eBay about a past sales listing removed over an intellectual property violation. They expressed concern about future risks and sought advice, noting the absence of an appeal option and the item's sale months back. albertabrightalberta and luckythewinner explained the process typically involves the rights owner and not eBay directly, suggesting contacting the rights owner if possible or avoiding listing the item again. diamond-angel shared insights on the prevalence of counterfeit items and how eBay must comply with intellectual property laws, suggesting that while frustrating, such regulations aim to combat counterfeit products.
I recently received a notice from eBay that a listing I sold months ago was removed due to an intellectual property violation reported by a rights owner. While no action was taken on my account, I'm concerned about potential issues in the future. The item was sold back in June, and I'm unsure if there’s a way to directly address or contest these notifications when no appeal button is available. Has anyone else experienced this? How have you navigated similar situations to prevent future account risks?
(It's really me here. I used the AI post generator to create this post just to see how horrible of a job it does.)
diamond-angel
·2 weeks agoLet's talk about how many knock off sellers there are out here, and how it is literally theft of intellectual property. There's a guy out here selling $40 "********l" gear, when the original manufacturer price on their website is over $1,200. He also advertises "bulk pricing" etc. Buyers are getting screwed and don't know it. Buyers have a problem with the knock off junk, call the brand, and the brand spends money dealing with "Sorry, there is no serial number, not a ****** product. Can't help you." I worked for a high-end manufacturer of .mil equipment, we had to do this all the time. Some of these knock offs we went after with FBI IC3 (international theft of IP) and we won three times, put the knock off faker here in the US in jail, literally. So the 'report' is only the start of the process. While there is a lot to dislike out here (EBAY keeping your payouts for weeks in their overnight sweeps), the IP knock off thing is actually regulated by Code of Federal Regulations. EBAY has to pull the product, or they also face charges. You CAN use the chat bot (hate that thing) to EVENTUALLY get to a tech support human, prove the product was not a knock off of a patented or proprietary product. Not having an 'appeal' button for sellers is a major fail on the developers at Ebay. It's as if they think their a-i bot makes reasonable decisions against humans.
I'm NOT defending the ebay aibot. I've just had to deal with knock off thieves out here for years, and I get why they started this process. Knock off rats stealing from good people. So there's two sides to this.
Just sayin.
luckythewinner
·2 weeks ago · EditedVERO exists to protect eBay from liability arising from your actions. The only way to contest a VERO takedown is to file a counter-notice under the DMCA and essentially "dare" the rights owner to file a legal case against you. If they do not, eBay theoretically has the right to restore the contested listing, but they are not obligated to do so.
And if you read the DMCA carefully, you will realize that it actually pertains to the content on the website, not the actual item in question. So as soon as you list the item again, you have technically created new content - and therefore the whole process resets and the rights owner can simply file another notice against that new content.
How have you navigated similar situations to prevent future account risks?
I have navigated it by steering clear of listing that item again. eBay has very little incventive to go to bat for the seller, because that exposes eBay to liability and I suspect their legal team would argue it is not worth the risk to eBay .
albertabrightalberta
·2 weeks agoAre you sure the removal is the result of a report by the rights owner?
Every VeRO report I've ever seen or heard of has had the contact information in the takedown message. (I've never heard of an appeal button in a VeRO removal.) Since VeRO removals are submitted by the rights owner, it's ONLY the rights owner to whom you can appeal and that's in the form of contacting them through the means given in the removal notice.
FYI, the following is from a very old (2007) VeRO removal that I successfully countered and the listing was reinstated. I don't know whether the wording has changed since then but AFAIK, the message would be similar.
"The rights owner, XXXXXX, notified eBay that this listing violates intellectual property rights. When eBay receives a report of this type of violation, we remove the listing to comply with the law.
snip
"We encourage you to contact XXXXX. directly if you have any questions. You can send an email to (and there's a contact email addy)."
christworks
OP2 weeks ago@albertabrightalberta This is the odd thing. It does not say it is VeRO. Anytime I've had an actual VeRO, it says it in the message. The right's holder is mentioned, but they are not on the VeRO list. There is no contact information for the rights owner. That's why I was not sure that was a VeRO. It sounds like someone contacted eBay and asked them to remove the listing. What I don't get is that the listing was not active, as the item had been sold months ago.
When I sold HBC products, on occassion I would get eBay notifications that a listing that sold many months before was removed due to the expiration date being passed. At the time the item sold, it had months left before it expired, but somehow eBay went back and "pulled" the listing months later. By the time they sent the notice to me, the product was expired, but it wasn't at the time I sold it. I never could get a straight answer from eBay about that either.
albertabrightalberta
·2 weeks ago"It does not say it is VeRO."
I don't know that I've actually seen "VeRO" on the notification part of a removal. It has always just referred to the "rights owner."
However in my message, it did include (separate from the takedown part) a link to ebay's policy at the time that referred to VeRO.
The link no longer works but this was the only part that referred to VeRO:
- Take eBay's brief tutorial on Intellectual Property Policies and VeRO
- Read the ended listings FAQ at http://pages.ebay.com/help/confidence/vero-removed-listing.html
The rights owner doesn't have to be on the VeRO list to be able to report infringing listings and get them removed. In fact, the VeRO list on ebay is a tiny fraction of anyone who can rightly report.
I seriously doubt that reports for expired products would have been VeRO reported items. That honestly makes no sense to go back months to get items removed that were within date code at the time of sale. I suspect those reports might have been submitted by the community.