Craigslist Countersues eBay... But Still Doesn't Answer Questions About Diluting eBay

from the almost,-but-not-quite dept

I'm generally a fan of Craigslist, and think that people all too often blame the company for things it didn't do. However, I'm still having trouble understanding Craigslist's position in the legal battle it's now having with eBay. After getting sued by eBay for unilaterally changing eBay's ownership percentage, Craigslist has now countersued eBay for a laundry list of things, including: "unlawful and unfair competition, misappropriation of proprietary information, deceptive passing-off, business interference, false advertising, phishing attacks, free-riding, trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and breaches of fiduciary duty." That's quite a list, but it doesn't respond to the key point of eBay's lawsuit: did Craigslist break the law in changing eBay's ownership percentage? As Rob Hyndman points out, it really appears that Craigslist is now trying to "accomplish by litigation what it failed to accomplish by business planning and sensible precautions among co-founders when it first issued shares, and by negotiation with eBay when it acquired its interest."

As for the specific charges filed by Craigslist, it claims that eBay tried to put Kijiji execs on its board (which contradicts what eBay has said). Also, it claims that eBay has bought keyword advertising on sites like Google that were misleading, appearing to look like they came from Craigslist, when they really pointed to eBay or Kijiji. That certainly could be a trademark violation, if true, but hardly excuses the behavior of Craigslist's board in diluting eBay's shares. You can certainly see where Craigslist is coming from, and why it's quite uncomfortable with the relationship with eBay -- but the company now seems to be throwing the kitchen sink at eBay, dredging up any kind of complaint it can, without dealing with that core issue of how it diluted eBay's shares. That only lends more credence to the idea that Craigslist knows what it did was wrong, and is now throwing out all sorts of other complaints to distract from that. It's like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, who responds by pointing out that his mother who caught him ran a red light when driving home. It may be true, but it's totally unrelated and doesn't excuse grabbing the cookie.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: dilution, fiscal responsibility, lawsuit
Companies: craigslist, ebay


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    doh, 13 May 2008 @ 3:48pm

    sop

    This is standard operating procedure in a law suit... You countersue with a whole bunch of allegations, making it even more of a pain to keep pursuing the original litigation...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      gid, 13 May 2008 @ 5:06pm

      Re: sop

      This works in most cases. Except for SCO/IBM. After a while it becomes a matter of poo throwing back and forth between two sides.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 13 May 2008 @ 5:59pm

    Its also more efficient. If you have a series of issues you are considering litigating, and you are already in court, its makes a certain sense to litigate all of the issues at once, instead of waiting and dragging both parties to court together. Whether any of the issues Craigslist raised rise to the level of legitimate litigation is another question, but if they do in the aggregate, might as well knock them out all at once.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    steveballmer, 13 May 2008 @ 7:07pm

    Craigslist is GUILTY

    Countersuing is an lod trick I have tried hundreds of times!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Glenn Fleishman, 14 May 2008 @ 10:07am

    Without knowing bylaws, deal, you're just wrong

    Mike, usually a fan of your views, but you're just being contrary here.

    If eBay engaged in the behavior that Craig's List accuses them of in the suit, then Craig's List had a number of tools at their disposal, and we don't know precisely what those are, except that in the event of eBay engaging in direct competition there were rules that could be invoked.

    Likely, CL didn't address that in its suit because its non-germane. You don't file a countersuit with answers to the suit; rather, you file on unrelated issues, or the same issues reversed if that's possible (which it isn't here).

    So eBay's suit will be answered by CL in court; CL's by eBay. The two suits might result in a settlement to avoid ebay or CL or both being revealed in all their naked litigatory behavior.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Another Anonymous Coward, 15 May 2008 @ 8:37am

    Why is nobody mentioning Gumtree? Gumtree was bought by ebay some years ago and is the sister site to Kijiji. Until recently you couldn't even mention craigslist on gumtree as it would be deleted.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Mandy, 18 May 2008 @ 11:25am

    Pedro's Plaza

    I prefer using www.pedrosplaza.com anyways.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Rachna, 27 May 2008 @ 10:10pm

    Both Bleaching their brand

    Whosoever is found guilty in the fight between craigslist and ebay, but this fight had depreciated the brand of both these companies and hindered investor's interest in it. This fight will take a lot away from these companies. This give a enormous opportunity to other classified websities like clickindia.com to take a lead in Indian classified market.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    post free ad, 10 Jan 2010 @ 9:57pm

    Top india classified site

    Countersuing is an lod trick I have tried hundreds of times!

    India no1 classified site
    Adsglobe.com

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    sunshine (profile), 26 Oct 2010 @ 4:25am

    Both ebay and craiglist sucks

    Check out this site jeejuads.com a newly launched indian classifieds website.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    sunshine (profile), 26 Oct 2010 @ 4:27am

    Both ebay and craiglist sucks

    Check out this site jeejuads.com a newly launched indian classifieds website.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    xmemart, 1 Apr 2014 @ 6:03am

    post free classified

    xmemart is free classified website
    xmemart.com

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.