Rolex Loses eBay Lawsuit

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Feb 26th 2009 at 10:02PM

Once again in the lawsuit follies, eBay is the victor. Bloomberg reports that the world's largest online auctioneer won a German court ruling in a case brought by Rolex over sales of counterfeit watches on eBay. The decision showed that Rolex could not find any similar counterfeit goods were offered on eBay after the company after the company was alerted to the possibility of counterfeits. Ulrich Egger, the spokesman for the court said that eBay's filter program detects sales that wold violate trademark rights.

Next up for eBay, a suit in London against L'Oreal. So far, eBay's lawsuit results have been mixed. It won against Tiffany & Co. last year in New York but lost to LVMH and Hermes in France. Rolex first sued eBay in 2001 over counterfeits but the original ruling in Dusseldorf for eBay was overturned in part in 2007 by the Federal Court of Justice which said eBay couldn't be held liable for damages and had to monitor its site to prevent fakes from being sold. Judges determined eBay is doing enough to police its site.

UPDATE: Blogging Stocks reports that eBay shares are at a seven-year low, partially due to concerns over the sales of counterfeit items on the site. Although eBay is spending millions to monitor its sellers, the problem of fakes continues to be one that plagues the site and damages its reputation.

Tags: ebay, lawsuit, rolex