The American jeweler company Tiffany filed a complaint against eBay back in the 2004 blaming the online auction giant of encouraging sales of fake Tiffany jewelry.

However, the four year long lawsuit has finally come to an end and the judge declared that eBay cannot be held directly responsible for sellers’ unlawful actions.

Judge Richard Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan ruled on Monday: Tiffany has failed to demonstrate that eBay knowingly encouraged others to dilute Tiffany’s trademarks.

SAT team completely agrees with the judge’s decision. How can a marketplace be blamed for backing up counterfeit product sellers once they’ve already have complied with all requirements in this regard?

For example have a look at this eBay counterfeit product policy page:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/replica-counterfeit.html

It is clearly stated on this policy that for listing fakes on your eBay listings you can get an account suspension straight away. Besides, there’s a VeRO program on eBay guarding trademarks and copyrights. All companies are very welcome to participate in the program and they can easily report listings which infringe intellectual property and they’ll be instantly removed.

Of course, Tiffany’s legal counsels opinion differs and they were fighting a four year long legal fight stressing that ‘The principal purpose of trademark law is first to protect consumers and then to protect brand owners’. And Tiffany’s spokesperson Mark Aaron said he was shocked at such a court’s decision and ‘…we believed and continue to believe that eBay unfairly and illegally profits at Tiffany’s and the public’s expense through the sale of counterfeit merchandise’.

However, how they see this being carried out in the real life? How realistic is it for eBay to increase the level of checking through listings and making sure the listed item isn’t a fake Tiffany jewelry? The only plausible decision would in fact be banning Tiffany’s and other companies’ products whose trademarks might be potentially violated from the market completely.

But what consequences would it bear for the whole buyers’ community whose rights should be protected by the trademark law in the first place? This is a question not to be answered easily. In modern times all companies are taking more strict positions in terms of protecting their intellectual and trademark property. However, finding a fine balance isn’t easy – and the contradictionary court rulings in the States and in Europe are vivid examples of it.

Let’s remember how recently eBay was given a verdict to pay $63 million to a luxury-goods maker LVMH, which produces Louis Vuitton and Dior products.

Obviously the same was expected in this Tiffany vs eBay lawsuit, but the American court decision was more common-sense based. Well, at least in this case. More likely there are more similar case to follow…