French Giant L’Oreal Loses Case Against eBay
What unbelievable news! On-line auctioneer eBay has won a case filed by the French behemoth cosmetic company L’Oreal. L’Oreal had taken legal action against eBay, saying that eBay didn’t take enough measures to stop the sale of counterfeited products on their site.
This is not the first time that L’Oreal is “angry” with eBay. It has brought similar cases to courts in the UK, France, Germany and Spain against the on-line auctioneer. These courts haven’t yet offered a ruling on their proceedings. In all the cases L’Oreal’s argument is the same: eBay is selling counterfeited L’Oreal products and they are demanding that eBay not be allowed to sell their products anymore.
Brussels was the first of the bunch to rule in these cases, and incredibly the court didn’t agree with the French cosmetics giant’s complaint: Not allowing eBay to sell its products anymore, which are said to be fake.
According to AFP, the court ruled that the world’s largest on-line auctioneer did not have “a general monitoring obligation” of what is offered on their site.
An eBay spokeswoman commented:
The judge confirmed that eBay acted diligently when it received letters from L’Oreal. We cooperated by removing items L’Oreal complained about.
The spokeswoman also added that the court ordered that the cosmetics firm pay 15,000 euros (22,400 dollars) in court costs.
As The Australian News reports, L’Oreal was “extremely surprised” by the ruling. They also added that the court had made a mistake as it “minimized the role eBay played in the sale of products through its platform”.
I think it’s important to add that Brussels’ court decision contrasts with a ruling made in June by Paris commercial court. In this ruling, eBay was ordered to pay nearly €40 million in damages to Louis Vuitton for selling fake luxury goods.
We don’t know yet if L’Oreal’s complaint had a real basis, but we can notice that the argument was not totally denied by eBay’s representatives. eBay’s victory was basically due to the statement that eBay is not responsible for fake goods presented on their site. Stay tuned however, L’Oreal still has a few cases to go in the other European countries. They are also planning on appealing the Belgian court’s decision. The scoreboard, for now however, reads eBay-1, L’Oreal-0.
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