Counterfeit items

[101retro]

This is interesting.  A company just reported me for selling a counterfeit item of theirs and had my listing removed with the vero policy.  The item is not counterfeit,... that company just doesn't want anyone else selling their overpriced merchandise.  I am going to write them a nasty email lol

[rfmtm]

VeRO is often abused, and the DMCA often misused, but still ebay gets to do what it wants. In a nutshell, when a VeRO member requests it, eBay removes an item in question, whether it has to legally or not.

Note that the actual DMCA law applies to copyright violations only. Authenticity and trademark abuse are not covered by the DMCA for web site removal under the law. It's eBay's own policy that extends the DMCA like behavior to this. The downside is that as a result you don't get the DMCA mandated remedies for people who abuse it.

Best you can do now is figure out what triggered the take down, and was it valid. First step is to contact the VeRO member and if no response, call ebay. Usually unless this is your main item of business, it is not worth the fight to relist one item and risk further trouble. Of course this is what VeRO abusers count on.

However, if it is clear abuse you have the right file in your local federal court, and here the loser pays the winner's court fees and up to trebled damages. Many have done this and won, even without an attorney, and once eBay's legal department is notified of the outcome, they leave you alone. Still, hardly worth it unless you have damages and it is affecting your ongoing business.

Many have also found a simple letter from their attorney to the VeRO member with a copy to ebay's legal department, quickly gets an abuser to back down. You also can file a counter-notice yourself, but it really only has legal standing in copyright issues.

[mamaji357]

Yes, mtgraves7984! Intellectual property rights, to be specific. Someone took a lot of time & effort creating that product! They deserve fair compensation not for just an idea (ideas can't be copyrighted or trademarked) but for their execution of an idea into being an actual product, then also going to all the work it took to market & sell it, fulfill orders, buy raw materials, etc. 

How do I know? I'm a published author of three copyrighted books, I used to be a book editor for the company that published them, & I supervised the updating of their author contracts. Lots of companies can simply print a book just as lots of companies can stamp out an already created product by reverse engineering it or making copies of already recorded music. 

Where the cheating/illegal part comes in is that *someone* had to develop (not just think of) and actually produce the prototype. THAT is the person, company or persons who lose out on the success of a trademarked or copyrighted product.

So many people don't understand this. Or refuse to. That's why selling counterfeit stuff is wrong, unjust & illegal. It short circuits a free market economy by removing incentives to create new and better products (tangible property) and intangible property like music and writing. Trademark infringement rewards easier, cheaper reproduction more than rewarding research and development.  If that flourishes, progress toward mass availability of better medicines, newer and safer products, new interesting books to read etc. slows to a crawl, and we all suffer. 

What if YOU went to all the trouble of writing a song, gathering (& hiring) musicians & buying expensive recording studio time? Then you paid companies to finish and reproduce 100 copies of a CD that you sell out of quickly at a public performance & make a nice profit on. So you order 500 to resell the same way. While you're selling those 500 at a reasonably brisk pace, you suddenly find out that people who bought your CDs are digitally reproducing them and giving or selling them to WAY more than a hundred more people. This happens so much that fewer and fewer people buy your CD anymore.  That really good music multiplies exponentially...and you earn squat from it. Wouldn't you be royally **bleep**ed off too!?

That's what selling counterfeit products does. And "I didn't know it was counterfeit" is not an acceptable excuse. It's your responsibility to make sure what you sell isn't counterfeit. That's usually not hard: Just put what you know to be a genuine product beside one a cheaper one you got God knows where. They often look and work differently. Even if they don't, if you bought the items for "a great price" know that you get what you pay for and if the price is "a steal" for you, rest assured that's just what it is -- stealing.

[albertabrightalberta]

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@slippinjimmy wrote:

I see a lot of replies.......

Personally I don't give an opinion on anything when all I have to go on is "A Company" and "The Item".

Not in any way disputing the fact that IP owners abuse the DMCA every day and in massive numbers.

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Exactly! Without pictures of the item(s) in question and the company who is alleging infringement, the OP gives no credible information. And a copy & paste of the part of the takedown notice would also show exactly what the allegation is. 

I tend to lean in favor of the rights owner and toward OPs hiding something when they don't give enough information.