Date: Friday, October 19, 2007

Should Companies Always Pursue Internet Copyright Infringements?

With auction sites such as eBay providing a platform for people to sell anything, it seems that counterfeit goods are a bigger problem than ever. The goods, most notably designer fashion and accessories, often seem to be carbon copies of the genuine article with counterfeited designs and logos. The question is, should luxury brands risk taking eBay to court for providing a platform to sell fake versions of their goods?

In the US, a single mother from Minnesota was recently fined a record $222,000 for illegally downloading and sharing copyrighted music. As infringing copyright by selling fake designer goods is a similar issue, you may think that suing eBay would be just as successful. In fact, current Intellectual Property (IP) law indicates that it wouldn’t. Gill Grassie, an Intellectual Property specialist, recently addressed this issue in The Times. She said: "The middle men are generally immune from prosecution providing they remove infringing material from their sites as soon as they are notified.”

Indeed, companies hoping to prosecute middle man sites don’t only face a difficult court case. As Grassie explains, “asserting what they consider to be genuine rights may give rights to liability.”  This means that companies choosing to sue could potentially be issued with a countersuit for damages. Damage claims tend to be for defamation of character and loss of revenue from the product itself.

A couple of brands have taken eBay to court over this issue – with mixed results. Rolex sued the German arm of eBay in 2001 for facilitating the sale of counterfeit watches but ultimately, they lost the case. Tiffany fared better in 2004, when eBay were asked to remove all counterfeit Tiffany merchandise from their site. This decision came after shocking evidence from the prosecution, which alleged a whopping 73% of all Tiffany merchandise on the site was fake.

Although it is both annoying and inconvenient for brands to see fake goods on eBay, they should accept that it isn’t necessarily in their best interests to sue. By pursuing a claim in court, they could end up with an unsavoury verdict and a huge fine.

Source:

The Times