Tiffany v. Tiphony

Can you tell the difference between these two rings? Well, the one on the left is real, and the one on the right is fake.

eBay is just a garage sale online. Do you think everything at a garage sale is what it looks like or says it is? Well on eBay, only 5% of the Tiffany jewelry is real.

Tiffany, who was not so ecstatic about this, filed a lawsuit against eBay saying that eBay had aided the infringement of its trademark by not doing enough to yank fake Tiffany jewelry off of its site.

Bruce Rich of Weil said, "Tiffany is trying to shift its own obligation to police theintegrity of its brand on to a third party because it doesn't want to spend the money necessary to combat counterfeiting. Another motive for Tiffany's suit against eBay is that, as a retailer, eBay is a competitor in the secondary marketplace."eBay a law of the Supreme Court's 1982 decision of the Inwood v. Ives case, which says a third party is liable if it "intentionally induces another to infringed a trademark or if it continues to supply its product to one whom it knows or has reason to know is engaging in trademark infringement.

Legally though, eBay is not responsible for its hosted content, co-founder of Bromberg & Sunstein law firm, Bruce Sunstein explains,"It is not its role to ensure that the objects exchanged are genuine, unless platform managers are aware of or have been informed of fraud and know that the objects they list are counterfeit." Tiffany felt that eBay should monitor all of their hundred million listings which are always in circulation from 250 million registered users. However, eBay countered, "We believe that a brand owner is the only one that can truly and effectively police its own brand."

But why should they have to police their site? People have to realize that if something that is a major designer product is going for a starting bid for .99 that there's something wrong with it. Most likely it's fake, or someone dropped it in the toilet. You get what you pay for.

The Verdict:

"Significantly, Tiffany has not alleged, nor does the evidence support a conclusion, that all of the Tiffany merchandise sold through eBay is counterfeit. . . . [T]he doctrine of contributory trademark infringement should not be used to require defendants to refuse to provide a product or service to those who merely might infringe the trademark. . . . Were Tiffany to prevail on its argument that generalized statements of infringement were sufficient to impute knowledge to eBay of any and all infringing acts, Tiffany’s rights in its mark would dramatically expand, potentially stifling legitimate sales of Tiffany goods on eBay. . . ."