France has fined eBay €1.7 million for not respecting fully a July 2008 injunction against sales of LMVH luxury goods on the online auction site. The web site reportedly let 1,400 sales of the company’s perfumes and other luxury goods slip through the filtering software it installed last year to comply with the court order. eBay was initially accused of not doing enough to stop copies of the company’s products, but the court order applies to fake as well as legitimate LMVH goods, new or used. Alex Von Schiermeister, director of eBay Europe, calls the fine disproportionate.
Links to other sites: BBC, CNet, TechCrunch
Joltid, a company owned by Skype’s developers and former owners, is suing Skype and eBay, Skype’s present owner, for copyright violation and breach of contract. EBay is in the process of selling 65 percent of Skype for $1.9 billion to a group of investors, who have also been named in Joltid’s suit. Skype’s founders, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, sold the company to eBay in 2006, but retained rights to the VoiP technology they developed, which they then licensed to Skype. In the suit, Joltid claims that eBay illegally obtained source code for its technology and thus violates the licencing agreement. It claims $75 million a day in damages. Cnet, Reuters
Ebay, the online auction company, has sold 65 percent of its interest in Skype to a group of investors led by Silver Lake Partners for $2 billion. For Bloomberg it signifies a return to the way investors behaved before the market “exploded” and the Financial Times describes it as curtains coming down on a deal that has come to be seen as Ebay’s biggest strategic mistake.
A French court ruled against cosmetics multinational l’Oréal Wednesday in a suit it brought against Ebay over profits made from sales of fake goods. The court in Paris said Ebay cannot be held liable but it ordered the two to work together to find a common solution to the online sale of counterfeit goods. The case is the first of several brought against Ebay and, the Financial Times writes, is important because “it is part of a series of lawsuits worldwide about who should be responsible for policing internet sales, particularly in high-value markets.”
