E site of bidding in line eBay is in the collimator of LVMH, the world number one of the luxury. Louis Vuitton and Dior Seam, two of the largest marks of the French group, sent in the current of the summer to the American company eBay Inc (and with its Swiss subsidiary company eBay AG), which received them recently, two assignments in front of the commercial court of Paris. Wednesday September 20, eBay did not comment on this information.
These marks denounce the fact that eBay, first community of purchasing private individuals and salesmen on Internet - more than 200 million members - does not do all that is needed to prevent the sales of parts counterfeited on its various national extensions and the hundreds of thousands of virtual shops that these last lodges.
These houses of luxury claim that the damage, in particular material, undergone between 2001 and 2005 would be considerable. Dior Couture (activity loan-with-to carry group Christian Dior) claims 17 million euros of damages. The malletier Louis Vuitton asserts 20 million euros. Over the only second quarter 2006, 300.000 advertisements of sales of Dior products and 150.000 of Vuitton bags would have been seen on eBay, of which at least 90% would be forgeries, according to LVMH.
No recent figure is available on the weight of the counterfeit in the world trade. But nobody disputes that the phenomenon reached of the alarming levels. According to estimates', the sales of forgery would represent between 5% and 9% of the world trade.
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The subject became a major concern of the industrialists, all confused sectors. Internet worries them particularly. In 2004, 30% of the customs seizures in the European Union came from Web sites.
If China became the continent of the manufacture of forgery, Internet is that of the sale of the forgeries, likes to say Marc-Antoine Jamet, president of the Union of the manufacturers (Unifab), which joins together 400 companies anxious to protect their rights.
The company eBay, while becoming at the beginning of the years a 2000 kind of vacuum-attic planetary, could arouse the interest of the salesmen of counterfeits. It is what one claims at LVMH. On the French site (eBay. Fr), the settings at price of allegedly new bags of mark for a few tens of euros are often visible, when the prices in shops oscillate between 500 and 1.500 euros. At LVMH, where teams spend their time buying products on eBay in order to check their authenticity, one ensures to have made establish hundreds of reports of ushers.
We condemn the counterfeit in an aggressive way, ensures Esther Ohayon, spokesman of eBay France.
Any sale of counterfeited products is completely illegal on eBay. Our services withdraw the openly false objects of the site. We call also upon our members so that they announce them to us. And we set up the program VeRO (verified rights owners) which allows all having them right (holders of marks, etc) to warn us so that we put an end to a sale of counterfeit
.
At LVMH, one denounces the little of effectiveness of this service. Alarms on settings in sales of forgery would not be followed systematic withdrawals. The largest users of eBay, as good customers - the group is remunerated partly by taking commissions on the sales - would often pass through the meshs of the net.
It is completely inaccurate, according to M me Ohayon,
and eBay does not privilege any salesman.
The lawyers of LVMH regularly continue the private individuals salesmen on eBay. While being caught some with the site, they want to apply the strategy of the landlord, who consists in directly aiming the owners of the distribution networks of counterfeit.
This tactic recently succeeded in Louis Vuitton. At the beginning of the year, the malletier, like four other large marks of luxury (Burberry, Chanel,
Gucci,
Prada) gained his lawsuit counters owners of the Market of Silk, high place of the counterfeit in full heart of Beijing.
The site eBay could however call upon the protective statute, in European right and in particular French, of shelterer. Under the terms of the French law for confidence in the numerical saving in 2004 (which rises from a directive of Brussels), the persons or entities which ensure storage in line of information and their provision of the public, profit from a reduced civil liability. They cannot be continued if, having stored illicit data, they acted promptly to withdraw them, as soon as they were informed of it.
JURISPRUDENCE GOOGLE
The lawyers of LVMH hope to be able to circumvent the difficulty while proving, in particular, which eBay is more than one simple shelterer but also a service provider. They estimate that Google jurisprudence opens the way to them.
In a stop of June 28, 2006, the Court of Appeal of Paris confirmed the judgment in first authority of the search engine on line for counterfeit of the Louis Vuitton mark, refusing in Google the benefit of the statute of responsibility reduced of the shelterers.
At LVMH, other assignments would be in preparation for the end of the year. In the United States, eBay must also face the proceedings instituted by the American jeweller Tiffany.
The eBay group does not may find it beneficial any to attack the marks frontally, ensures Marie-Thérèse Chedeville, auteure of a recent book on the site (
I eBay, I eBay not, with the editions Léo Scheer). The more so as it is possible, technically, to fight against the counterfeits by installing automatic filters and by setting up teams charged to track the forgeries
, relatively easy to identify.
Would the direction of eBay start to measure the risks of a lawsuit? Unifab confirmed, Tuesday September 19, that Mickael Jacobson, senior vice-president of eBay, proposed with its president, Mr. Jamet, in a mail of September 12, to meet it quickly to discuss a possible co-operation.
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