I am finding exact copies of my listings not on eBay.

[ronald3895]

Just for grins, I entered key words from my eBay adds into the webbrowser.

I got back my eBay listings, but what concerned me was the copies I found not on eBay sites, like gotosale.ru.

What kind of protections do we have for this blatant theft of IP? 

[tobaccocardyahoo]

That site is actually offering your item with their export services. If they sell the item, you will sell the item.

There are a host of sites which are offering items which they are using the Ebay sellers to dropship.

Only a judge can determine whether they are violating your IP rights, and protecting your IP rights are your responsibility and no one else's.

[valueaddedresource]

@ronald3895 unfortunately not a new scam and not much you can do about it - it's been happening for years.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Fraudulent-Website/m-p/34275229#M2351980 

Bad actors (usually not based in the US, like that .ru site would indicate Russia) scrape eBay and other marketplaces for product info to make legit looking item pages, load the data up on standalone websites, collect a bunch of Personal Identifiable Information and credit card numbers to use for all manner of fraudulent and criminal purposes and/if when their site host gets enough complaints to shut it down, they just spin up another one and keep going.

[toysaver]

Money is money.  I'd be happy for the sales if they copied my listings and then bought them.

[dirk12955]

A sale is a sale is a sale is a sale and I don't care where it 

originated before it came to  my eBay listings.

Google images and Google search shows all sorts of my listings 

when future buyer is looking something up.

[valueaddedresource]

I'm not sure why everyone else is talking about a sale - the OP did not say anything about a sale, they just said they did a web search and found a sketchy looking website that had copied their item info. 🤷‍

Looking at the site, it has multiple red flags for fraud and I'm 99.99999% certain if someone placed an order on it, they would just not receive anything.

And if they do receive the items because the site owner "drop ships" them from eBay, I'm 99.9999% certain it would be triangulation fraud using stolen credit card info for that purchase.

[onefootflipper1]

There are at least a dozen of these websites and at any given time they are mirroring thousands of my listings. They are all hosted overseas and there is just nothing practical that can be done about it. You could make fighting those websites your full time job and it would have no actual effect and you would earn zero money.

The best thing you can do is not to worry about it at all. None of it will ever actually effect you.

[kensgiftshop]

@ronald3895 

There are some site where they will use Ebay sellers as their dropshipper.

They sell the item on their site, then they buy the item from the Ebay seller and have it shipped to their customer.

Then there are affiliate sites, where they promote Ebay items and if any sale is made, Ebay gives them a little commission for the sale.

Then, there's the sites from Russia, like the one above, which is usually a scam site.

[inhawaii]

What protections do you have against someone who wants to buy one of your items and re-sell it to someone else?

None.

[nyr134]

That happened to me a while back.  I was selling a fairly obscure tip tray from more than a hundred years ago. Not too many of those around anymore, so it had some desirability for specialized collectors.  That Russian site used my photos and said they had eleven of those tip trays available for a fraction of my price.  Clearly, as @valueaddedresource said, they were not actually going to sell my item.  They were seeking credit card numbers and personal information.

My item sold without any interference from those folks.

[lacemaker3]

I agree with @nyr134  and @valueaddedresource.

Any selling site like that on the .ru domain, is not dropshipping. They are scammer websites.

[ethylsgarage]

Anything you put on eBay is NOT your IP, it is eBay's, unless it is an item you hold copyright, patent, or registered trademark on. Read the details of the sales contract more carefully, your listing text and images are not considered your IP. If you think someone is copying your images and reusing them you should watermark them.

[chapeau-noir]

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@ethylsgarage wrote:

Anything you put on eBay is NOT your IP, it is eBay's, unless it is an item you hold copyright, patent, or registered trademark on. Read the details of the sales contract more carefully, your listing text and images are not considered your IP. If you think someone is copying your images and reusing them you should watermark them.

---

Unfortunately, watermarking doesn't materially do anything - these people have no shame, and fighting with them about it does no good. 

[luckythewinner]

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@ronald3895 wrote:

What kind of protections do we have for this blatant theft of IP? 

---

If you want IP protections for IP violations on gotosale.ru, you will need to contact gotosale.ru. 

[hardrhymer76]

They use webcrawling bots to scour the internet for niche or obscure items, unique part/model numbers, or anything for sale that appears near the top of Google search results. The bots copy and paste those listings on the scam site knowing they will likely appear on page 1 along with yours.

They've done this with a couple of my items in the past, and I noticed they copy the description text verbatim from the listing, almost as if there was no human oversight involved. I promptly removed any reference to my user ID and store name from my descriptions, and added a warning on my most unique items:

"We only sell on eBay. If you're reading this on any other site, it's a SCAM".

 If it gets left in, maybe it'll save somebody. Beyond that, I've decided not to worry about it.