L'Oreal Loses To eBay In The UK This Time... Where Else Will It Try?
from the if-you-fail...-just-sue-elsewhere dept
You may recall that L'Oreal has been on an incredibly misguided legal campaign against eBay, blaming the company for the fact that some of its users are selling fake L'Oreal products on the site. Rather than go after the actual counterfeiters, L'Oreal insists that eBay's at fault. After losing its lawsuit in Belgium last summer, the company filed nearly identical lawsuits in the UK, France, Germany and Spain, hoping that somewhere one of those courts would side with it. So far, it's not looking good. Two weeks back, even France sided with eBay, even though it had ruled otherwise in similar cases. And now comes the news that late last week, the UK sided with eBay as well. At some point, will L'Oreal finally realize that maybe it's barking up the wrong tree?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.
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Filed Under: liability, trademark, uk
Companies: ebay, l'oreal
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Apparently the L'Oreal case fell apart when their council was eventually forced to admit that 15 'imitation' goods they'd supplied as samples of what could be purchased over Ebay were in fact real L'Oreal products.
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Well it seems that way in business and politics nowadays: "Yes, we know that we are going the wrong way, but we spent too much money to reverse course now, so we'll keep on going down this route until we can't go any further."
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...or they ignore the sunk cost and pick up the pieces.
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re: Too Much Money
"There, there, dear--I know you love your kitty. Don't worry. If the 'lost pet' signs don't work, we'll have our legal team file briefs to get your beloved Muffy back."
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Re: re: Too Much Money
Case in point the Dutch government and the Joint Strike Fighter. That project has cost quite a few arms and legs already, and everyone knows it's a bad investment. "But we can't stop now, we've invested too much money into this, so we'll keep on investing."
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Re:
Oh wait, that is really really stupid logic. Nevermind.
Lets follow the actual laws on this one, and if a crime was commited charge the person who commited it instead of the tool maker. Doing otherwise just because the tool maker is an easier target is a very unjust endeavor.
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Re: Re:
He said nothing about laws or the government forcing ebay to take actions, he said ebay should take actions by their own will because it's the right thing to do
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Re:
Actually, eBay does exactly that. If alerted to fraudulent products it's very quick (sometimes too quick) to take it down.
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Another Logic Fail.
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Re:
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Better Analogy
Should Rolex sue the city of New York for not doing a better job of policing their streets and allowing the city to become a veritable black market for illegal knock offs?
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L'Oreal
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If ...
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would l'oreal have to prove that the seller is providing fakes, or just accuse them of doing so?
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Re:
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