Thursday, January 29th, 2009
eBay Rights Owner Summit
Here’s one I missed last week. Sandwiched in between eBay’s earnings announcement and the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States, eBay hosted a closed door Summit in New York for some key rights owners, who are some of the most proactive members of eBay’s VeRO program (the program in which eBay partners with rights owners so they can report potentially counterfeit items), and law enforcement.
I’ve covered the issue of counterfeits in the context of news and related lawsuits on Ink before. A common theme that has run through those posts has been one of collaboration and how I believe it should not be the sole responsibility of eBay to fight the global issue of counterfeiting.
I spoke with some of our legal and trust and safety folks who organized the event and apparently we invited over 30 companies and associations; however, a large majority of them did not attend. The cynic in me wondered if the event was boycotted because they were dissatisfied with eBay’s efforts, but a member of our legal team said that, in his experience, when the rights owners do not think we are doing enough – eBay certainly hears from them, and they would have taken the opportunity to attend our event to make their feelings known.
Before I could utter the words: “Yes but you’re a lawyer, you would say that” he backed it up with this fact I hadn’t heard before – last year eBay proactively removed as many listings as all VeRO members combined. Something I wasn’t aware of.
Some of the attendees included the International Trademark Association (INTA) Nokia, Bose, and Chanel . I wondered if the brands in particular were unsatisfied with what we are doing, but it seems it was more a case of them wanting to get an update or learn more about eBay’s efforts and the tools available to them.
One of the new features that was received favorably was one that had been asked for at previous events. Namely, the ability to have the opportunity to streamline a report to eBay if listings seem to be offered by a user whom the brand owner had previously kicked off the site due to VeRO violations.
eBay also shared the great trust and safety efforts we have made on the back-end, securing customer’s eBay accounts and the eBay site, plus how we are stopping “the bad guys” (who previously were the ones knowingly trying to sell counterfeit items) coming onto the eBay site in the first place.
I asked one of eBay’s legal team, Dan Dougherty, to sum up what the event meant to him and eBay he said: “I think that the atmosphere was positive, and it would be fair to say that the people who attended seemed to feel like eBay does a good job, which was great to hear.”
I’d be interested to attend one of these events in the future to get more info for folks.
Cheers,
RBH
Tagged: Bose, chanel, Dan Dougherty, ebay, ecommerce, INTA, Nokia, rights, rights ownership, vero
LauraOn January 30, 2009 at 10:37 am Said:
The Vero program is annoying for sellers who sell vintage items – there is no way to dispute the right owners counterfeit claims.
Often Vero members will not respond to seller’s emails which make resolving the issue impossible.
Ebay should set up a mediated dispute form, and lift the compliancy failure warning if the Vero member refuses to respond to the sellers queries.
DaveyOn January 30, 2009 at 5:25 pm Said:
The VeRO program is a sham for most small sellers who don’t even need to show a pattern of abuse to get nailed (as I did with the very first legit Microsoft program I put up), where a manufacturer or their agent can shoot first then ask questions later, and where small sellers of used items would probably give up rather than fight. Manufacturers do not have to ever validate that their accusation was valid unless taken to court by the accused. Tabberone and some others take a more vigilant viewpoint and most are 100 percent winners in court if their goods are legit.
Manufacturers like Monster are known to use VeRO to harass legitimate sales by private individuals. The VeRO program has nothing to identify or stop this pattern of abuse on the part of its rightsholders.
Ebay marks sellers so affected by accusation as definite Policy Violators, which many honestly are not. That practice in itself is repugnant and another vehicle that alienates sellers the first time it happens to them. This in itself needs to change to where the seller is only marked as a violator if a pattern of abuse emerges.
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