Liability of eBay for Infringing Sales - Assignment Example

While it was true that the infringement of the trademark was taking place on eBay's website, the court did not hold eBay liable for the infringement. The judge decided the case for several reasons as discussed below.

One of the major reasons why the online auction house was not held liable was because the claim made by Tiffany, under Inwood, lacked sufficient evidence to suggest that eBay was aware of the infringement of the trademark made by some users on its website (Inwood Laboratories, Inc. v. Ives Laboratories, 1982). The eBay website is used by millions of sellers and it is not possible to identify which of the users were breaking the rule if the users did not include such words as “pirated” or “counterfeit” in their listing.

Another reason was that the court did not find eBay to be ‘willfully blind’ to the evidence found on its website (Tiffany (NJ) Inc. v. eBay Inc., 2010). Whenever eBay was informed via notice of claim of infringement (NOCI) of the suspected cases of counterfeit sales on its website, they took appropriate actions i.e. they deleted the suspected listings using the Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) program and also suspended the sellers involved. They also refunded all the money related to those particular transactions, a measure that impressed the judge. eBay also included special warnings that notify the sellers to ensure that the products they are selling are genuine and also reminded them of eBay counterfeiting policies.  In addition, eBay provided a link to the Tiffany “About Me” page. Basing his judgment on the points weighted above, the judge of the U.S. district court concluded that eBay had taken great measures to combat counterfeiting and therefore cannot be held liable for the infringement of the trademark (Tiffany (NJ) Inc. v. eBay Inc., 2010).