I doubt seriously that the auction houses will win, but I do think that it's a very gray area in French law:
I guess it comes down to whether the court views eBay, Inc. as an auctioneer or not. WordNet defines the word as auctioneer as:
1. an agent who conducts an auction
Since eBay owns the computer servers and the software that facilitates the auction, and that auction could not take place *without* eBay's involvement, they are conducting the auction as far as I see it...to me personally I feel that's the definition of auctioneer.
Couldn't agree more, Cynthia
I am sure that eBay's defense will be that they never own or take possession of the items, but I think that's complete doublespeak--live auction houses don't OWN the items either though they do take possession of them.
But I'm neither a judge, nor French, so we'll see!
I'm pretty sure that taking possession is not what makes someone an auctioneer.
If it was, where would that leave property auction houses? They don't (and can't) take possession of the properties they auction, but they are still auctioneers.
If the difference is supposed to be that eBay doesn't inspect all of the items up for auction on its site, surely that doesn't stop them being an auctioneer? It just means that they are a rather poor quality auctioneer; in that they allow almost anything to be sold in their auctions without proper inspection.
Perfectly respectable, bricks and mortar auction houses sometimes auction miscellaneous boxes of stuff that they have not inspected.
That lack of inspection does not mean that they are not auctioneers.
Bottom line, eBay's software acts as an auctioneer and they call the auctions 'auctions' and to me, a person/company/software/robot who hosts and runs auctions is, indisputably, an auctioneer.
